OF  THE 

University  of  California. 


GIF^T  OF 


Accession        96092  Class    %^ 


THE 


DANTE   ALIGHIERI.       (RAPHAEL.) 


ABOUT  DANTE 


AND    HIS 

"BELOVED    FI.ORENCE" 


BY 


FRANCES  FENTON  SANBORN 


Dante  .  .  .  The  bard 
Whose  genius  spangled  o'er  a  glowing  theme 
With  fancies  thick  as  his  inspiring  stars. 

William  Wordsworth. 


SAN   FRANCISCO 

THE  WHITAKER  AND  RAY  COMPANY 

(incorporated) 

1901 


Copyright,  1901, 

by 

Frances  Fenton  Sanborn. 


TO 

E.  D.  S. 

WHO  GREETS  THE  NEW  CENTURY 

IN 

THAT  "DIVINER  AIR" 

OP 

THE  PARADISO 


96092 


TO  DANTE. 

O  STAB  of  morning  and  of  liberty ! 
O  bringer  of  the  light,  whose  splendor  shines 
Above  the  darkness  of  the  Apennines, 
Forerunner  of  the  day  that  is  to  be ! 

The  voices  of  the  city  and  the  sea, 
The  voices  of  the  mountains  and  the  pines, 
Repeat  thy  song,  till  the  familiar  lines 
Are  footpaths  for  the  thought  of  Italy ! 

H.  W.  Longfellow. 


INTRODUCTION. 

There  was  never  a  better  time  than  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century  for  the  study  of  Dante,  the 
''  Divine  Poet."  The  eve  of  Good  Friday  of  the  year 
1901  A.D.  completes  the  seven  hundredth  year  since 
he  started,  as  he  tells  us  in  his  immortal  poem,  the 
Divina  Commedia.  on  a  journey  to  the  land  of  spirits, 
soon  finding  as  his  guide  his  beloved  Virgil,  who  con- 
ducted him  through  the  Inferno  and  the  Purgatorio 
until  he  met  his  early  love,  Beatrice,  who  led  him  on 
to  the  Paradiso. 

In  Italy,  and  throughout  Christendom,  the  poet's 
fame  increases. 

In  Florence,  his  birthplace,  a  revival  of  the  public 
readings  of  his  works  is  established.  In  the  opening 
address,  the  honorable  syndic  expressed  his  warm 
satisfaction  at  "the  relighting  of  this  votive  lamp,^^ 
and  in  behalf  of  the  anniversary  of  the  freedom  of 
Italy  he  proposed  "that  the  audience  sends  its  greet- 
ing to  King  Humbert,  in  the  name  of  Dante,  —  a  name 
typical  of  Italian  worthiness  and  virtues." 

How  it  would  have  softened  his  anguished  heart  in 
exile,  could  he  have  heard  with  prophetic  ear  this 
eulogium,  coming  centuries  after  his  lofty  soul  had 
won  its  own  paradise.  The  Antiquarian  Society  library 
teems  with  Dantean  literature.  Though  as  yet  tin- 
canonized  by  the  Church  which  he  loved,  the  hum- 
bler classes  speak  his  name  with  reverence.  They 
know  the  sufferings  in  song,  if  they  cannot  read  the 

9 


10  INTRODUCTION. 

poem  of  the  great  martyr.  His  place  is  sure  while 
the  beautiful  hills  keep  guard  over  his  birthplace,  and 
the  bright  waters  of  the  Arno  reflect  the  soft  blue  of 
an  Italian  sky  to  mirror  its  sunlight  and  starlight. 

One  can  learn  to  know  and  love  the  study  of  Dante 
without  a  knowledge  of  the  Italian  language.  There 
are  innumerable  English  translations  of  his  great 
poem,  and  masterly  commentaries  accessible  in  public 
libraries.  Gladstone's  bookseller  had  orders  to  fur- 
nish him  copies  of  everything  published  concerning 
Dante. 

The  brilliant  productions  of  the  essayists,  Carlyle, 
Emerson,  Macaulay,  Lowell,  Stedman,  Norton,  Ros- 
setti,  and  a  score  of  others,  with  hundreds  of  com- 
mentators, show  the  enthusiastic  gleaning  of  the 
fields  of  Dantesque  lore. 

Thanks  to  them  one  and  all  {even  to  the  spirits  of 
just  men  made  perfect)  for  the  rich  repast  to  which 
they  welcome  us.  Lovingly,  lingeringly,  we  sip  and 
feast,  and  would  fain,  in  this  little  book,  point  to 
others  the  alluring  way. 

The  poet  Tennyson  and  Edward  Fitz  Gerald,  walk- 
ing together  one  morning  in  Regent  Street,  stopped 
before  a  shop  window  to  look  at  the  busts  in  marble 
of  Goethe  and  Dante  side  by  side.  After  some 
minutes  in  silence,  Fitz  Gerald  turned  to  his  friend, 
saying,  "What  is  it  in  Dante's  face  that  is  wanting  in 
Goethe's?" — ^^  The  Divine,'^  was  Tennyson's  instant 
reply.     To  the  '^Divine  PoeV^  we  invite  our  readers. 

F.  F.  S. 


ABOUT   DANTE 

AND   HIS  "BELOVED    FLORENCE." 

CANON  FARRAR,  IN  A  LECTURE  ON  DANTE. 

If  any  young  men  are  in  my  audience,  I  invite 
them  to  hold  high  a  perpetual  companionship  with 
such  souls  as  this;  and  if  there  are  those  who  have 
found  delight  in  meaner  things,  I  would  hope  that 
by  taking  to  the  study  of  Dante  they  might  be  in- 
duced to  turn  away  from  such  folhes,  and  breathe  the 
pure,  eager  air  of  the  great  and  immortal  poet.  He 
is  one  of  the  landmarks  of  history.  Those  who  know 
it  best  wish  others  to  share  the  knowledge  of  that 
verse,  whose  magnanimity  has  power  to  inspire  the 
faint-hearted,  whose  tenderness  has  overcome  sullen- 
ness  and  assuaged  perplexity,  and  of  which  it  has 
been  truly  said,  that  when  once  we  have  held  con- 
verse with  its  grandeur,  our  souls  can  never  seem 
small  again. 

11 


UNIVERSITY 


OF 


12  ABOUTTOJTfEAND   HIS 


FLORENCE. 

"  I  am  glad  you  are  going  to  Florence.  It  is  a  delightful 
spot  from  which  to  watch  the  spring.  The  greening  hills 
around  the  dome  of  Bellosguardo  (which  has  not  been  alto- 
gether ruined,  I  trust)  are  never  to  be  forgotten." — Letter  from 
Annie  Fields. 

Never  could  "  the  greening  hills "  have  come  for- 
ward more  luxuriantly,  nor  the  enchanting  panorama 
of  Florence  have  unfolded  more  bewitcliingly,  than 
in  a  dreamy,  blossoming  month  of  April  when  it 
greeted  the  writer  after  a  winter's  voyaging  around 
the  historic  Mediterranean  from  Gibraltar  to  Sicily 
and  Malta,  the  Nile,  Palestine,  and  Greece.  And  it 
was  the  beloved  home  of  our  Daftte. 

It  were  not  wise  to  attempt  comparisons  between 
the  noted  cities  and  sights  of  these  countries  bor- 
dering on  the  "  Great  Sea."  All  have  their  charms; 
but,  surely,  in  the  kingdom  of  Italy,  Florence,  "  The 
Beautiful,"  reigns  as  its  crown  of  rejoicing. 

What  wonder  that  the  great  poet,  whose  eyes  were 

familiar  with  scenes  of  beauty,  such  aS  Bellosguardo, 

Fiesole,  Certosa,  and   San  Miniato,  should,  when  in 

frenzied   longings  for   his   "beloved   Florence,"  have 

coined  into  immortal  verse  the  visions  of  his  celestial 

Paradiso. 

Of  all  the  cities  of  the  earth, 

None  is  so  fair  as  Florence.     'T  is  a  gem 

Of  purest  ray,  and  what  a  light  broke  forth 

When  it  emerged  from  darkness. 

Rogers. 

We  cannot  deplore  the  mediaeval  ages  which  gave  us 
the  Divina  Commedia.     Had  Dante  lived  even  so  late 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  13 

as  Savonarola,  the  world  would  have  lost  it.  These 
mighty  spirits  seem  to  walk  the  streets  and  rule 
Florence  "  from  their  urns."  We  see  Dante's  majes- 
tic form  among  the  august  signoria,  and  we  listen 
for  the  trumpet-tones  of  the  priest  from  the  pulpit 
of  the  Duomo.  The  cloisters  of  San  Marco  are  a 
shrine  in  which  every  devotee  of  religious  liberty 
finds  inspiration. 

The  pilgrim  lover  of  Dante  in  Florence  will  get 
his  pleasure  in  a  minor  key,  so  far  as  satisfactory 
relics  can  be  found,  or  traces  of  his  early  youth  and 
boyhood.  But  who  can  imagine  Dante  ever  a  boy 
among  boys,  —  full  of  fun,  marbles,  balls,  and  kites, 
eating  green  almon'ds,  and  staining  his  lips  with  the 
rich  juice  of  the  vineyards?  We  like  to  think  of  him 
pensive,  handsome,  but  pale,  with  deep  brown  eyes, 
that  studied  the  stars  and  dreamed,  —  a  meditative, 
bookish  boy. 

One  incident  of  his  boyhood  is  authenticated.  While 
playing  around  the  old  church  of  San  Giovanni,  where 
the  Baptistery  now  stands,  a  companion  of  Dante's 
fell  into  the  font !  Dante  sprang  to  his  rescue  with 
such  vehemence  that  he  broke  the  marble  ! 

In  this  font  Dante  was  baptized,  for  it  is  as  old 
as  the  Basilica,  which  had  its  first  walls  built  on  the 
ruins  of  a  temple  dedicated  to  Mars.  From  Dante's 
day  to  the  present,  all  the  CathoUc  infants  born  in 
Florence  must  be  christened  there,  whether  of  high 
or  low  birth. 

Very  few  of  the  great  repubUc  of  travelers  fail  to 
visit  Florence,  and  if  they  have  read  the  Divine 
Comedy   and    learned   to   know   the  "Great    Floren- 


14       ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE." 

tine,"  they  will  find  intense  pleasure  in  meeting  so 
many  representations  of  his  strong  features  in  busts, 
engravings,  paintings,  and  statuettes. 

Dante's  House  is  not  easy  to  find.  It  is  in  the 
old  town, — No.  2,  Via  Dante  Alighieri,  —  and  is  close 
pressed  upon  by  stone  houses  of  the  same  style  and 
height.  The  street  is  so  narrow  that  the  dayhght 
comes  in  sparingly,  and  one  must  hug  the  walls  as 
he  walks,  to  escape  a  passing  dray.  In  Dante's  day 
his  home  was  as  fine  as  his  neighbors',  and  he  was 
a  prominent  figure  among  them. 

An  inscription,  in  ItaUan,  over  the  front  door  says: 
"  In  this  house  was  horn  the  immortal  poet,  Dante  Ali- 
ghieri. It  is  open  to  the  public,  Wednesday,  Saturday, 
and  Monday,  from  eleven  a.m.  to  three  p.m.'^ 

On  those  days  the  street  door  level  with  the  pave- 
ment stands  open.  A  stairway  ascends  abruptly  from 
the  entrance.  It  is  narrow,  steep,  and  inclosed  by 
walls  on  both  sides.  At  the  top,  a  very  small  land- 
ing confronts  you  with  only  one  turn,  and  that  to  the 
left  through  a  passage  only  wide  enough  for  one. 
On  your  right,  a  door  stands  open,  where  a  polite 
custodian  receives  you,  if  not  engaged  with  other  visi- 
tors. This  is  the  front  room,  and  spans  the  entire 
width  of  the  house,  yet  is  a  small  room.  It  is  hghted 
by  two  front  windows,  well  guarded  with  inside  and 
outside  blinds  and  the  typical  lattice-work  over  the 
glass,  giving  the  appearance  of  prison  gratings. 

There  are  very  few  relics  of  Dante's  personal  effects, 
—  a  tattered  flag,  two  large  keys,  an  hour-glass,  his 
coat  of  arms,  framed,  and  a  painting  of  a  Madonna. 


II 


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■f*^^^.gp-5-^>, 


:V- 


;  f^ 


i 


THE    HOUSE    WHERE    DANTE    WAS    BORN    AND    LIVED    UNTIL    HIS 
BANISHMENT. 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."   17 

A  desk  with  a  glass  cover  may  have  been  his  own. 
There  is  his  bust  by  Dupre,  very  fine;  a  portrait  by 
Giotto;  a  medalUon  Hkeness,  the  work  of  Pietro  Lom- 
bardo.  There  is  a  small  framed  engraving  of  Dante 
and  Beatrice  together,  —  he  with  a  scornful  upper  lip, 
Beatrice  evidently  indignant  or  pouting.  Another  fine 
Beatrice  is  a  bust  by  Lodini.  Of  course,  all  repre- 
sentations of  her  are  ideal. 

A  room  opening  out  of  this  front  room  was  per- 
fectly dark.  The  custodian  said,  "Dante  was  born 
in  this  room,  —  in  this  room!^^ 

Very  near  the  Dante  house  stands  the  palatial  one 
of  the  Portinari  family,  to  which  Beatrice  belonged. 
In  the  court  '^  Daniels  Corner  ^^  is  shown,  where  he 
ventured  to  watch  for  her  coming  to  take  her  daily 
exercise,  attended  by  her  vigilant  duenna, — a  pretty 
child  of  eight  years  when  he  saw  her  at  a  May  party 
in  her  father's  house  (he  only  nine),  yet  this  uncon- 
scious Beatrice  was  to  become  the  passion  of  his  hfe 
and  the  inspiration  of  his  genius  till  apotheosized 
by  his  muse  in  the  Paradiso  of  his  immortal  poem. 

There  is,  also,  in  the  room  sacred  to  Dante,  an 
engraving  of  the  tomb  at  Ravenna,  some  of  his  ashes, 
a  wreath  of  leaves,  and  a  piece  of  white  tape  the 
exact  measurement  of  Dante's  head.  There  is  the 
mask,  or  one  of  them,  the  Countess  Sforza  must  have 
held  on  to  to  the  one  that  she  took  from  Tacca  so 
slyly. 

Professor  Giuliani,  celebrated  for  his  commentaries 
upon  the  Divina  Commedia,  has  deposited  in  this  room, 
sacred  to  Dante's  memory,  his  entire  collection  of 
Dantean  literature.    It  fills  two  large  book-cases.    The 


18  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

custodian  showed  us  illuminated  copies  of  the  poem, 
albums,  and  some  beautiful  illustrations  by  Phoebe 
Traquar,  the  notes  by  John  S.  Black.  Professor  Whyte 
used  these  notes  in  his  classes  at  St.  George's  Free 
Church,  Edinburgh,  Scotland. 

Near-by  Dante's  House  is  the  little  church  of  San 
Martino,  where  he  and  Gemma  were  married.  We 
went  into  it,  and  stood  near  the  altar,  with  closed  eyes, 
trying  to  conjure  up  the  scene  of  that  bridal  party. 
We  should  like  a  picture  of  the  handsome  bride, 
Gemma,  in  quaint  costume,  —  but  far  more  of  the 
sober  bridegroom,  —  as  they  pledged  their  faith  for 
time  and  eternity. 

Dante  took  his  wife  to  his  father's  home,  where 
they  lived  until  his  banishment.  Six  children  were 
born  to  the  inheritance  of  this  glorious  ancestry. 

The  Tower  of  Dante,  overlooking  his  house,  is  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  named  in  his  honor.  Dante  must 
have  watched  the  beginnings  of  the  grand  Duo  mo. 
But  a  short  few  years  passed  before  his  banishment,  as 
its  corner-stone  was  laid  in  1298.  The  dreadful  decree 
that  drove  him  from  home,  wife,  children,  and  all  that 
he  held  dear,  except  his  honor,  was  issued  in  1301. 

Who  can  say  that  he  did  not  watch  the  building  of 
that  dome  from  the  battlements  of  heaven? 

The  builder's  fame  is  eternal.  "  Brunelleschi's 
Dome,"  it  is  called  by  the  English  visitor,  and  always 
the  Duomo  by  the  Italians.  One  does  not  ask  for  the 
Cathedral ! 

The  interior  of  the  Duomo  is  very  impressive.  One 
of  the  popes  —  Pius  IX.  —  said,  "/n  aS^^.  Peter^s,  man 
thinks;  in  the  Duomo,  one  prays. ^^ 


19 

Dante  was  a  prominent  figure  among  the  citizens 
who  met  on  the  lounging-places  of  the  piazzas  to  talk 
over  public  affairs,  and  much  there  was  to  discuss,  for 
those  were  troublous  times  in  Florence. 

"Banters  Seat,^^  on  the  piazza  of  the  Duomo,  is  marked 
by  a  slab  of  stone  set  in  the  wall  of  a  building  on  the 
south,  opposite  the  Campanile. 

The  stone  in  Florence  still  revered, 
Called  Dante's.    A  plain  flat  stone,  scarce  discerned 
From  others  in  the  pavement,  whereupon 
He  used  to  bring  his  great  chair  out ;  turned 
To  Brunelleschi's  church,  and  pour  alone 
The  lava  of  spirit  when  it  burned ; 
It  is  not  cold  to-day.     A  passionate 
Poor  Dante,  who,  a  banished  Florentine, 
Didst  sit,  austere,  at  banquets  of  the  great. 
And  muse  upon  this  far-off  stone  of  thine. 
And  think  how  oft  some  passer  used  to  wait 
A  movement  in  the  golden  day's  decline, 
With  ''  Good  night,  dearest  Dante."     Well,  good  night. 

Mrs.  Browning,  in  '*  Casa  Guidi  Windows." 

Mrs.  Browning  passionately  loved  Italy  and  Flor- 
ence, where  she  lived  most  of  the  time  from  September, 
1845,  the  date  of  her  marriage,  to  June,  1861,  when  she 
died  at  her  house,  Casa  Guidi,  so  well  known  by  her 
poem.  On  the  wall  of  this  house  is  a  marble  slab 
with  an  inscription,  in  Italian,  commemorating  her 
virtues  and  her  verse,  placed  there  by  the  municipaUty 
of  Florence.  Her  grave  is  in  the  old  Protestant  Ceme- 
tery (there  is  a  very  large,  more  modern  ground),  but 
the  old  spot  is  well  kept  up,  with  neat  walks,  shrub- 
bery, fine  shading  trees,  and  parterres  of  flowers.  It 
is  a  place  where   lovers  of   Mrs.  Browning's   poetry 


20       ABOUfT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE." 

will  come  to  pay  their  homage.  The  sarcophagus  in 
which  her  delicate  form  rests  was  designed  by  Robert 
Leighton.  It  has  the  lihes  of  Florence,  and  figures  of 
poetry  and  its  sister  arts.  The  monument  rests  upon 
a  broad  base,  closely  caressed  by  the  fresh,  green  grass, 
dotted  with  pink  and  white  daisies.  There  are  lilies  and 
evergreens  around,  and  some  English  men  of  letters 
rest  very  near,  —  Rogers,  Landor,  Trollope,  and  the 
poet  Clough. 

Dante's  statue  in  the  loggia  of  the  Uffizi  Gallery 
(by  Demi)  is  fine  and  all-satisfying.  The  niches  of 
the  long  colonnade  are  adorned  with  sj;atues  of  the 
distinguished  Florentines,  artists,  men  of  letters, 
poets,  scientists,  warriors,  statesmen, — an  illustrious 
company,  whom  Dante  honors.  Michael  Angelo  is 
there,  Petrarch,  Da  Vinci,  Donatello,  Galileo,  Cellini, 
Boccaccio. 

Dante's  pose  is  magnificent,  —  in  his  right  hand  he 
holds  a  book;  the  left  arm  rests  upon  a  lyre.  The 
countenance  portrays  a  majesty  Uke  a  god.  We  did  not 
see  in  it  so  much  the  tragedy  as  the  power  of  life. 

James  Russell  Lowell  says  of  it:  "  There  is  one 
figure  before  which  every  scholar,  every  man  who 
has  been  touched  by  the  tragedy  of  life,  lingers  with 
reverent  steps.  .  .  .  The  haggard  cheeks,  the  lips 
clamped  together  in  unfaltering  resolve,  the  scars  of 
Ufe's  long  battle,  and  the  brow  whose  stern  outline 
seems  the  trophy  of  final  victory,  —  this,  at  least,  is  a 
face  that  needs  no  name  beneath  it.  This  is  he  who 
among  Uterary  fames  finds  only  two  that  for  growth 
and  immutabiUty  can  parallel  his  own.  .  .  .  The  suf- 
frages of  highest  authority  woilld  now  place  him  second 


DANTE   ALIGHIERI. 


*\  B  R  A  R  p* 


^  OF  THE 


ITY 


UNIVER 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "  BELOVED  FLORENCE."   23 

in   that    company,   where    he,    with  proud    humility, 
took  the  sixth  place."     {Inferno,  canto  iv.) 

The  Dante  statue  in  the  piazza  of  Santa  Croce  has 
been  a  good  deal  criticised,  but  it  has  a  fine  effect  of 
dignity.  It  stands  on  a  lofty  pedestal,  wrapped  in  a 
Roman  toga.  He  seems  looking  down  on  the  moving 
populace,  who  swarm  over  that  piazza,  half-scornfully, 
half-mournfully.  The  four  corners  of  the  pedestal 
have  carvings  of  the  lions  of  Florence.  The  city  made 
high  carnival  the  day  of  its  unveiling  in  1865.  The 
dignitaries  gave  a  succession  of  grand  festivals,  and 
Dante  had  come  at  last  unto  his  own. 

There  is  a  curious  fresco  picture  of  Dante  on  the 
north  aisle  wall  of  the  Duomo,  done  by  Domenico 
di  MichelUno  in  1465.  It  seems  that  a  Frate  An- 
tonio, a  passionate  lover  of  the  Divina  Commedia,  had 
permission  to  read  and  expound  it  to  the  people  in 
the  Duomo.  He  thought  it  a  great  pity  that  he  could 
not  show  a  statue  or  picture  of  the  great  poet  at  the 
same  time,  and  so  proposed  to  the  magnates  who  con- 
trolled affairs,  that  one  should  be  painted.  They  chose 
Michellino,  who  has  made  rather  a  queer  thing  of  it. 

Poor,  dear  Giotto  had  been  buried  and  monumented 
himself  for  a  century,  or  he  might  have  had  the  com- 
mission. 

The  painting  is  allegorical.  A  structure,  pyramidal 
in  form,  sets  forth  the  poem  in  progress  from  the 
Inferno  to  the  Paradiso.  Dante  stands  out  in  bold 
rehef,  pointing  to  this  object  with  one  hand;  in  the 
other  he  holds  his  book  open  toward  the  spectator.  It 
is  not,  assuredly,  in  very  good  taste. 

On  the  right  of  the  picture  is  a  view  of  the  city  of 
Florence. 


24   ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE." 

A  monument  to  Dante  was  placed  within  the  church 
of  Santa  Croce  about  the  same  time.  This  church  is  the 
Pantheon  of  Florence.  Michael  Angelo  and  Galileo  are 
buried  there,  and  Dante  should  have  been,  and  would 
have  been,  if  Florence  had  repented  and  done  her  first 
works  centuries  ago.  Surely,  Ravenna's  claim  is 
stronger. 

The  known  friendship  between  Giotto  and  Dante 
associates  their  names  so  closely,  that  the  searcher  after 
Dante's  footprints  most  naturally  looks  up  everything 
pertaining  to  Giotto,  and  he  finds  treasures  of  value 
untold. 

To  the  Bargello  chamber  he  wends  his  way.  Those 
famous  frescoes  well  hold  their  own.  "The  Paradiso," 
in  which  Dante  is  introduced  walking  in  a  procession, 
covers  one  side  of  the  wall.  The  figures  are  high  up, 
and  we  were  glad  of  the  services  of  the  custodian,  with 
his  long  wand,  to  point  them  out. 

This  done,  it  seemed  as  though  our  Dante's  presence 
illumined  the  whole  scene.  Corso  Donati  and  his 
tutor,  Brunetto  Latini,  walk  by  his  side;  then  there  are 
hundreds  of  figures  of  dukes,  cardinals,  angels. 

The  "  Bargello  "  was  so  named  from  the  ofl&cer  or 
captain  of  justice  under  whose  administration  the 
great  palace  was  placed.  The  room  which  holds 
Giotto's  picture  is  now  called  the  Chapel  of  Mary 
Magdalena.  The  entire  building  was  formerly  a  court 
of  justice  and  a  prison,  but  is  now  a  national  museum, 
and  one  not  the  least  among  the  many  vast  reposi- 
tories of  high  art  in  Florence. 

Giotto's  "Inferno"  is  painted  over  the  entrance  of 
the  chapel.     It  represents  Satan  in  the  attitude  given 


THE   BARGELLO    DANTE.       BY    GIOTTO. 


"THE 


OF 


^NlVERs/TV 


i£jt 


OF 

iEPRH\K 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."   27 

him  by  Dante  in  the  thirty-fourth  canto  of  the  Inferno, 
and  would  be  a  terrifying  picture  to  the  spectator  if 
the  colors  had  not  been  well  subdued  by  "  Time's 
effacing  fingers." 

Dante's  face  and  figure  made  strong  points  for  an 
artist. 

In  the  Bargello  picture,  he  is  represented  as  a  youth, 
a  blossom  of  pomegranate  in  his  hand,  and  on  his  head 
a  soft  hood  or  cap  falling  gracefully  over  the  back  of 
the  neck. 

This  fresco  is  the  earliest  picture  of  Dante  known. 
It  was  lost  to  sight  for  five  hundred  years.  Some  of 
Dante's  enemies  had  whitewashed  it  so  thoroughly, 
that  they  believed  it  entirely  obliterated. 

Posterity  owes  an  immense  debt  of  gratitude  to  three 
gentlemen  who  devoted  much  arduous  labor  to  rescue 
it  from  obHvion:  Mr.  Kirkup,  an  Englishman;  Henry 
Wilde  of  the  United  States;  and  Mr.  Aubrey  Bezzi,  an 
Italian. 

Carlyle  says  of  another  portrait  of  Dante:  ''  Lonely 
there,  painted  as  on  vacancy,  with  the  simple  laurel 
wound  round  it;  the  deathless  sorrow  and  pain,  the 
known  victory  which  is  also  deathless;  significant  of 
the  whole  history  of  Dante.  I  think  it  is  the  mourn- 
f ulest  face  that  ever  was  painted  from  reality,  —  an 
altogether  heart-affecting  face." 

Dante  is  represented  by  Boccaccio  as  a  man  of  aus- 
tere habits,  and  of  meager  diet,  even  when  not  at  the 
tables  of  those  who  made  him  feel  how  hard  it  was 
to  eat  their  bread.  Can  Grande  of  Verona  was  the 
host  who  drew  forth  this  bitter  wail  from  the  great 
exile.     (Paradiso,  csLuto-KYii.) 


28  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

Dante  was  usually  reticent  and  reserved,  even 
haughty,  among  strangers;  but  with  his  peers  (who 
were  they?)  his  talk  was  unconstrained,  his  language 
as  keenly  poHshed  as  in  his  writings,  and  he  was 
polite,  though  often  sarcastic  and  self-asserting. 

Dante's  face  in  youth  was  handsome,  — 

"  The  clear,  grave  face  that  looked  on  Beatrice." 

In  later  years  it  was  strong,  heavily  marked.  He 
had  a  prominent  under  lip,  aquiline  nose.  His  crisp, 
curly,  black  hair,  wrinkled,  swarthy  skin,  and  sorrow- 
set  expression  would  easily  have  provoked  the  shrugs 
and  whisperings  on  the  street  corners,  as,  absorbed  in 
meditation  deep,  profound,  he  passed  along  with  head 
bent  down,  "There  is  the  man  who  has  been  in  Hell!" 
So  realistic  was  the  imagery  of  the  Great  Poet. 

There  are  many  of  Giotto's  paintings  in  Santa  Croce 
and  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  Novella. 

Ruskin  has  expatiated  largely  and  eloquently  upon 
these  in  his  charming  little  book.  Mornings  in  Florence. 
Some  of  them  retain  the  original  coloring;  others  are 
retouched  occasionally. 

One  needs  a  good  glass,  good  eyes,  a  strong  head 
and  determined  purpose,  if  he  would  come  to  know 
them  well.  Neck  and  brain  will  tire  long  before  the 
will  assents  to  relinquish  the  delight  of  studying  Old 
Masters  on  vaulted  walls.  How  these  great  beings 
retained  their  own  eyes  and  seven  senses  up  aloft 
on  ladders  at  such  dizzy  heights  is  a  marvel. 

In  the  library  of  the  Doge's  Palace,  Venice,  are  pic- 
tures by  Giotto  on  parchment.  One  is  a  scene  in  the 
Paradiso,  of  Beatrice  attended  by  angels.     Giotto  sur- 


"BELOVED    FLORENCE."  29 

vived  Dante,  his  beloved  friend,  long  enough  to  have 
known  his  great  poem,  and  how  he  must  have  prized  it. 
Dante  has  immortalized  the  great  painter  in  the 
Purgatorio,  canto  xi.:  — 

In  painting,  Cimabue  thought  that  he 
Should  hold  the  field ;  now  Giotto  has  the  cry. 

Longfellow's  Translation. 

Cimabue  had  been  the  first  to  discover  the  genius  of 
the  little  shepherd-boy  drawing  with  chalks  on  the 
stones  of  the  fields  in  Fiesole.  All  the  world  knows 
his  history  now,  and  is  grateful.  Cimabue  was  never 
jealous  of  his  rival,  when  the  brilHant  pupil  broke 
away  from  the  conventionalities  of  the  Byzantine 
school  of  painting,  and  made  his  own  style,  as  every 
genius  must  do.  The  first  work  that  gave  him  pre- 
cedence among  all  painters  of  those  times  was  the 
crucifix  over  the  door  of  the  Church  of  San  Marco  in 
Florence.  It  is  painted  in  tempera,  on  a  background 
of  gold. 

What  a  procession  of  immortals  from  Cimabue  and 
Giotto  down! 

The  Florence  school  needs  fear  no  rival.  Conscious 
those  gifted  beings  were  of  their  own  powers.  The 
artist  magnified  his  oflSce,  and  feared  neither  the  frown 
nor  courted  the  favor  of  king  or  potentate. 

A  perpetual  stimulus  to  the  genius  of  the  Florentine 
artists  (Venetian  as  well)  lay  in  the  hearty  apprecia- 
tion of  their  work  by  the  common  people,  as  well  as 
by  their  peers  and  the  throne.  A  new  picture  to  be 
unveiled,  the  entire  populace  would  claim  its  right  to 
assist  at  the  sight.     So  in  the  palmy  days  of  Greece,  a 


30       ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

new  poem  or  a  fine  statue  was  welcomed  with  laurel 
wreaths.  Such  encouragement  warms  the  heart  of 
the  sculptor,  painter,  and  poet. 

When  Cimabue's  most  celebrated  Madonna  was 
brought  in  1280  to  a  chapel  in  the  Church  of  Santa 
Maria  Novella  (where  it  is  now  guardedly  shown  as 
the  greatest  treasure),  it  was  brought  in  great  state, 
with  banners,  flags,  grandees  in  gorgeous  robes,  and 
crowds  in  procession  following.  It  was  a  gala  day. 
The  name  of  the  street  where  the  artist  had  his  home 
and  studio  was  changed  to  Allegro  ("rejoicing"). 

When  Michael  Angelo  was  leaving  Florence  to  "  lift 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  in  the  air,"  he  turned  for  a 
final  look  at  the  Duomo,  saying,  "  Better  than  that  I 
cannot  do;  copy  it  I  never  will.^' 

Dante's  friend  Giotto  wrought  its  chaste  font  for 
holy  water.     His  monument  is  in  the  Duomo. 

No  one  city  of  Italy,  or  of  the  world,  combines  so 
many  works  of  Old  Masters  in  painting,  sculpture,  a  nd 
architecture  as  Florence.  To  the  Church,  its  popes, 
cardinals,  and  dukes,  that  appreciated  and  encouraged 
them,  and  that  has  preserved  them  in  fit  settings  in 
galleries  and  churches,  the  world  owes  everlasting 
gratitude.  And  the  world  comes  in  crowds,  year  by 
year,  increasingly,  to  admire  and  adore.  And  ever 
associated  with  these  masterpieces  are  the  bright- 
flowing  Arno,  the  picturesque  bridges,  the  white  statues 
on  street  corners,  the  broad  piazzas,  the  charming 
Cascine  with  its  embowered  walks,  the  gay  shops  and 
stone  palaces  of  the  Lung  Arno,  the  hospitalities  of 
its  foreign  residents,  and  over  all  the  luminous  blue 
of  an  Italian  sky. 


GIOTTO. 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."   33 

The  marvelously  beautiful  gates  of  the  Baptistery, 
wrought  chiefly  by  the  artist  Ghiberti,  were  pronounced 
by  Michael  Angelo  worthy  to  be  "  the  gates  of  Para- 
dise." Dante  never  saw  them,  nor  did  he  live  to  see 
the  Campanile  and  its  exquisite  bas-reUefs,  the  work 
of  his  friend  Giotto.    How  it  would  have  pleased  him!" 

From  the  beginning  of  Giotto's  career,  Dante  had 
helped  the  shepherd-boy.  As  he  rose  in  fame  he  grate- 
fully looked  to  his  poet  friend  for  suggestions  for  his 
themes,  and  proudly  painted  the  portraits  of  his 
patron,  then  in  the  zenith  of  his  power  and  influence. 

Heaven-born  geniuses  both,  yet  how  different  their 
last  years  of  life,  —  Giotto,  courted,  petted  by  princes, 
kings,  cardinals,  and  popes,  every  touch  of  his  brush 
in  demand  at  lavish  compensation,  basking  in  lux- 
ury and  sunshine;  poor  Dante,  shivering,  hungry, 
leaving  — 

All  things  most  dear  to  him,  ere  long  to  know 
How  salt  another's  bread  is,  and  the  toil 
Of  climbing  up  and  down  another's  stairs. 

Paradiso,  canto  Ivii. 


34  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 


FROM  AN   ESSAY  BY  DEAN   CHURCH. 

In  Dante,  a  youth  dreamed  through  in  the  sweetest 
of  Italian  homes,  a  manhood  spent  in  effort  in  the 
most  stirring  and  revolutionary  of  Italian  common- 
wealths, an  old  age  dragged  through  in  wanderings 
and  hopeless  exile,  learning  all  the  shapes  and  secrets 
of  wickedness,  of  weakness,  of  pain,  to  be  found  in  that 
wild  scene  which  Christendom  then  presented,  —  in 
Dante,  all  this  made  up  the  man  who  wrote  the  Divine 
Comedy.  It  was  no  mere  magnificent  literary  pro- 
duction of  imaginative  genius;  it  was  as  real  as  the 
man.     His  life-blood  was  in  it.  .  .  . 


BELOVED    FLORENCE."  35 


FROM   BYRON'S   "CHILDE   HAROLD." 

Ungrateful  Florence !     Dante  sleeps  afar, 
Like  Scipio,  buried  by  the  upbraiding  shore ; 
Thy  factions,  in  their  worse  than  civil  war. 
Proscribed  the  bard  whose  name  for  evermore 
Their  children's  children  would  in  vain  adore 
With  the  remorse  of  ages  ;  and  the  crown 
Which  Petrarch's  laureate  brow  supremely  wore. 
Upon  a  fair  and  foreign  soil  had  grown, 

His  life,  his  fame,  his  grave,  though  rifled  —  not  thine  own 
Happier  Ravenna !  on  thy  hoary  shore, 
Fortress  of  falling  empire !  honor'd  sleeps 
The  immortal  exile !     Arcque,  too,  her  store 
Of  tuneful  relics  proudly  claims  and  keeps, 

While  Florence  vainly  begs  her  banish 'd  dead,  and  weeps. 


36  •  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 


PART     I. 

Dante  Alighieri  was  born  in  Florence,  in  the  month 
of  May,  1265  A.D.  Of  his  ancestry  little  is  known, 
except  what  may  be  traced  from  a  few  passages  in 
his  epic  poem,  the  greatest  ever  written,  except  the 
Iliad  and  Milton's  Paradise  Lost.  That  the  Divine 
Comedy  came  out  of  the  mists  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  was  written  in  the  language  of  the  people,  never 
before  so  dignified,  adds  immensely  to  its  greatness. 
He  gave  his  country  a  beautiful  language  for  all  suc- 
ceeding ages,  and  to  posterity  a  mine  of  gold  from 
which  the  alloy  melts  away  as  commentators  and 
critics  lower  the  shafts,  uncover  the  veins,  and  apply 
the  fierce  heat  in  the  crucibles.  How  glows  the  living 
ore! 

Nature,  art,  science,  religion,  philosophy,  history, 
Hell,  Purgatory,  and  Heaven,  with  pretty  much  all 
else  conceivable,  go  to  the  making  of  his  poem.  We 
chant  the  Miserere  in  the  Inferno,  breathe  again  on 
the  mountain  top  of  the  Purgatorio,  and  glide  into  the 
enchantments  of  the  Paradiso,  beguiled,  charmed  into 
sympathy  with  the  tenderest  love-story,  in  which 
Dante's  Beatrice  has  become  his  ministering  spirit, 
and  through  his  genius  has  been  apotheosized  in  the 
very  heaven  of  heavens  itself. 

Dante  was  of  good  ancestral  bearings,  and  felt  his 
blue  blood.  He  was  proud  of  his  crest,  —  a  wing  of 
gold  upon  a  field  of  azure, — the  family  name,  Alighieri, 
signifying  "  wing-bearer."    His  father  was  an  advocate, 


"beloved  FLORENCE."  37 

with  a  prominent  position  in  Florentine  affairs.  The 
times  were  volcanic,  and  needed  strong  men  at  the  helm. 

Dante's  mother  (his  father's  second  wife)  is  known 
to  us  only  by  her  first  name,  Bella,  but  we  know  that 
she  was  a  woman  of  education  and  refinement.  She 
died  while  her  boy  was  young.  She  had  placed  him 
under  the  best  teachers,  and  personally  watched  and 
instructed  him.  Who  knows  but  that  it  was  a  spark 
from  her  own  genius  that  kindled  her  son's  into  im- 
mortal flame? 

Dante's  father  assumed  the  care  and  oversight  of 
his  boy's  education  after  the  death  of  his  wife. 

The  indulgent  father  accompanied  his  little  son  at  a 
May  Day  festival  given  by  Ser  Polco  Fortinari,  a 
neighbor  and  special  friend.  The  party  was  made  for 
the  host's  little  daughter,  Beatrice,  then  about  eight 
years  old.  No  record  is  given  of  La  Signora  Fortinari. 
Perhaps  Beatrice  was  motherless,  like  Dante,  who  was 
then  nine  years  old. 

The  little  girl  was  a  beauty,  probably  "  Queen  of  the 
May,"  and  dressed  in  white  like  an  angel.  The  vision 
took  immediate  possession  of  the  soul,  head,  and  heart 
of  the  remarkable  boy;  in  common  parlance,  he  fell 
desperately  in  love  at  first  sight.  He  rarely  saw  her 
while  they  were  children,  or  in  later  years;  but  she 
was  the  inspiration  of  his  muse. 

Beatrice  married  young,  and  died  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four,  her  lover  worshiping  and  faithful  to  her 
memory  even  unto  death. 

Dante's  teacher,  Ser  Brunetto  Latini,  was  one  of  the 
most  learned  men  in  Florence.    Unfortunately,  he  died 


38  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

when  Dante  was  only  fifteen  years  of  age,  but  their 
mutual  admiration  and  friendship  is  eloquently  told 
in  the  Inferno,  canto  xv. 
Ser  Brunetto  to  Dante:  — 

If  thou  thy  star  do  follow, 
Thou  can'st  not  fail  thee  of  a  glorious  port 
If  well  I  judged  in  the  life  beautiful. 
And  if  I  had  not  died  so  prematurely, 
Seeing  Heaven  thus  benignant  unto  thee, 
I  would  have  given  thee  comfort  in  the  work. 

Dante  to  Brunetto:  — 

In  my  mind  is  fixed,  and  touches  now 
My  heart,  the  dear  and  good  paternal  image 
Of  you  when  in  the  world  from  hour  to  hour 

You  taught  me  how  a  man  becomes  eternal ; 
And  how  much  I  am  grateful  while  I  live 
Behooves  that  in  my  language  be  discerned. 

Longfellow's  Translation. 

At  parting,  after  much  more  conversation,  his  dear 
old  teacher  said, — 

**  Commended  unto  thee  be  my  Tesoro 
In  which  I  still  live,  and  no  more  ask." 
Then  he  turned  around,  and  seemed  to  be  of  those 
Who  at  Verona  run  for  the  Green  Mantle 
Across  the  plain ;  and  seemed  to  be  among  them 
The  one  who  wins,  and  not  the  one  who  loses. 

Ibid.,  Trans. 

Ser  Brunetto  wrote  the  Tesoro  at  Paris,  wholly  in 
French,  because,  he  says,  he  was  in  France,  and  be- 
cause the  speech  was  more  delectable  and  more  com- 
mon to  all  people. 

Brunetto  wrote  the  Tesoretto,  a  poem  which  some 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  39 

commentators  think  gave  Dante  hints  for  the  Divina 
Commedia,  but  the  learned  Abbate  Zannoni,  who  edited 
it,  says,  "  If  any  one  thinks  so,  it  must  have  been  a 
slight  and  almost  invisible  spark  kindling  a  vast  con- 
flagration." 

Dante  studied  for  a  time  in  the  universities  of 
Bologna,  Padua,  and  Paris,  and  took  rank  among  the 
most  learned.  As  a  poet  he  had  no  rival  but  Petrarch. 
The  title  ^^  Poeta'^  was  affixed  to  his  name  at  its 
enrollment. 

Inheriting  a  fortune,  he  Raturally  found  his  place 
among  the  chivalry  of  Florence  during  the  wars  so 
incessantly  waged  between  the  Italian  states.  We 
know  from  his  poem  that  he  was  present  at  the  battle 
of  Campaldino  and  at  the  evacuation  of  Capraia. 

Proud  and  aristocratic  as  was  Florence,  she  de- 
manded that  her  statesmen  should  honor  the  ranks 
before  she  would  honor  them;  consequently,  every 
Florentine,  before  holding  office  under  government, 
was  obliged  to  enter  one  of  the  arts  or  guilds. 
There  were  seven  of  these  guilds,  the  priors  of  which 
constituted  the  supreme  administrative  council.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  the  year  1295,  Dante,  having  reached  the 
required  age,- — thirty  years,  —  entered  the  art  of  drug- 
gists. It  was  the  sixth  among  the  privileged  arts.  It 
traded  in  the  spices,  precious  jewels,  and  rare  things  of 
the  Orient,  as  well  as  in  every  known  and  unknown 
drug,  strictly  so  called. 

The  family  of  the  Medici  took  its  name  from  the 
guild  of  physicians,  in  which  it  had  served. 

Florence  had  become,  in  Dante's  time,  a  magnificent 


40  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

city.  It  was  surrounded  by  walls.  Within  were  costly 
churches  and  elegant  palaces,  and  for  three  miles  out- 
side, and  over  the  slopes  of  those  beautiful  hills  of 
Fiesole,  San  Miniato,  Certosa,  and  Bellosguardo,  were 
castellated  mansions  and  luxurious  villas,  and  charm- 
ing gardens  with  all  manner  of  trees  and  shrubbery, 
fruit  and  flowers.  There  was  much  wealth  and  much 
ostentation. 

From  those  commanding  heights  the  views  of 
Florence  with  its  flowing  Arno  were  unsurpassed  for 
beauty  in  all  Italy.  The  most  prominent  and  lofty 
object  was  the  tower  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio,  ninety 
metres  in  height.  It  still  overtops  all  others.  It  sur- 
mounts the  palace,  called  in  Dante's  time  and  at  the 
present  day  the  Signoria,  as  that  was  the  name  of  the 
magistracy  holding  the  reins  of  government.  In  this 
august  body  of  officials,  small  but  select,  sat  Dante, 
after  he  was  made  prior  in  1300. 

This  Hall  of  Magistracy  is  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing buildings  in  Florence,  if  one  would  study  from  its 
paintings  and  architecture  the  history  of  the  state. 
One  is  shown  the  seats  of  the  Grand  Priors,  the  hall 
where  Savonarola  was  kept  prisoner,  and  passed  his 
last  night  before  execution,  which  took  place  in  the 
open  piazza  before  the  palace.  A  fine  bust  of  Dante 
was  placed  in  one  of  the  grand  apartments  in  1865 — 
the  six  hundredth  anniversary  of  his  birth.  Around  the 
bust  are  grouped  the  banners  of  the  Italian  cities,  and 
on  a  handsome  door  are  portraits  of  Dante  and 
Petrarch.  In  a  little  chapel  painted  by  Ghirlandajo, 
before  the  crucifix  over  the  altar,  Savonarola  took  his 
last  communion. 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  41 

The  building  is  rich  in  paintings,  statuary,  frescoes, 
mosaics,  cabinets,  treasures,  and  infinite  associations 
of  the  olden  times. 

The  nobility  of  Florence  was  in  a  state  of  deadly 
hostility  when  Dante  came  into  power.  There  were 
two  equally  powerful  factions,  named  Guelfs  and 
Ghibellines.  Their  spite  had  burst  into  flame  on 
account  of  a  lover's  quarrel  ending  in  the  assassina- 
tion of  the  gay  cavalier  Buondelmonte,  who  had 
transferred  his  devotion  from  his  fiancee^  a  lady  of 
the  family  of  Amadei,  to  one  of  the  Donati. 

Dante  says  of  this  old  feud:  — 

O  Buondelmonte,  how  in  an  evil  hour 
Thou  fled'st  the  bridal  at  another's  promptings ! 
Many  would  be  rejoicing,  who  are  sad, 
If  God  had  thee  surrendered  to  the  Ema 
The  first  time  that  thou  earnest  to  the  city. 

Paradiso,  canto  xvi. 

The  place  of  the  rioting  and  murder  of  Buondel- 
monte was  on  the  Ponte  Vecchio,  the  most  picturesque 
of  the  seven  bridges  over  the  river  Arno.  It  seems 
this  gay  cavalier  was  mounted  on  a  milk-white  steed, 
clothed  in  a  white  mantle,  one  Easter  morning,  return- 
ing from  a  visit  to  the  villa  of  the  Bardi,  beyond  the 
Arno,  and  had  just  approached  the  foot  of  the  bridge 
when  a  throng  of  friends  of  the  deserted  bride  rushed 
upon  him,  dragged  him  down,  and  killed  him  there,  at 
the  foot  of  the  "mutilated  statue  of  Mars." 

Dante's  father  was  a  Guelf,  and  Dante  joined  that 
party,  which  supported  the  interests  of  the  Church. 


42  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

His  ancestors  were  twice  banished  by  the  Ghibellines. 
His  own  banishment  took  place  while  the  Guelfs  were 
in  power,  which,  according  to  the  veracity  of  Boccaccio, 
turned  him  from  his  own  party  to  become  a  Ghibelline. 

There  were  also,  in  Florence,  rival  parties  among  the 
nobility,  called  Bianchi  (white)  and  Neri  (black). 
The  Bianchi  party  took  its  name  from  a  daughter, 
Bianca,  of  the  Cancellieri  family.  Her  lovers  quar- 
reled, and  so  the  old,  old  story  of  love  and  jealousy 
made  Florence  a  hotbed  of  faction. 

The  Neri  and  Bianchi  were  alternately  in  power. 
At  one  time,  the  Neri  being  in  full  possession  of  the 
government,  Dante,  with  some  others  of  the  Bianchi 
party,  went  to  Rome  to  intercede  with  Pope  Boniface. 
Their  suit  was  unsuccessful,  a  decree  of  banishment 
was  issued  against  them,  their  property  confiscated. 
Some  of  them  returned,  but  Dante  was  too  proud  to 
bend  the  knee  for  pardon,  and  he  never  saw  his  "be- 
loved Florence"  again.  He  wandered  from  place  to 
place  and  court  to  court  for  nineteen  years.  During 
this  time  he  wrote  his  Divine  Poem.  He  died  in  the 
care  of  a  generous  friend,  the  Lord  of  Ravenna,  Guido 
di  Polenta,  the  father  of  the  Francesca  da  Rimini 
whose  story  is  so  vividly  and  touchingly  told  in  the 
fifth  canto  of  the  Purgatorio. 

Dante  is  the  poet  of  Italy.  Petrarch,  his  only  rival, 
wrote  some  as  fine  sonnets,  for  he  wrote  ten  times  as 
many,  but  Petrarch  could  never  have  written  the 
Divine  Comedy,  if  even  an  epic  at  all. 

Canon  Farrar  pronounced  three  poets  only  as  en- 
titled to  the  rank  of  seer  as  well  as  bard, — iEschylus, 


"BELOVED    FLORENCE."  43 

Dante,  and  Milton,  —  and  Dante  in  a  supreme  degree 
above  the  others. 

J.  A,  Symonds  calls  Homer,  Dante,  Milton,  ''the 
triune  spirits  of  epic  song." 

We  need  have  no  disputes  over  Homer.  He  is  be- 
yond our  ken,  and  there  may  have  been  many  Homers, 
but  the  world  of  critics  delights  in  comparisons  and 
contrasts  between  Dante  and  Milton.  Why  not  let 
them  stand  side  by  side  in  their  glorious  inspired 
Christian  epics? 


44      ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 


ON  A  BUST    OF   DANTE. 
By  H.  W.  Parsons. 

See  from  this  counterfeit  of  him 

Whom  Arno  shall  remember  long, 
How  stern  of  lineament,  how  grim, 

The  Father  was  of  Tuscan  song. 
There  but  the  burning  sense  of  wrong. 

Perpetual  care,  and  scorn  abide ! 
Small  friendship  for  the  lordly  throng, 

Distrust  of  all  the  world  beside. 


O  Time,  whose  verdicts  mock  our  own, 

The  only  righteous  Judge  art  thou ! 
That  poor  old  exile,  sad  and  lone, 

Is  Latium's  other  Virgil  now ! 
Before  his  name  the  nations  bow. 

His  words  are  parcel  of  mankind, 
Deep  in  whose  heart,  as  on  his  brow, 

The  marks  have  sunk  of  Dante's  mind. 

E.  C.  Stedman  calls  this  entire  poem  of  seven  stan- 
zas *' perhaps  our  finest  American  lyric." 


DANTE.      BBONZB  BUST. 


UNIVERSITY 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."   47 

PART  II. 

THE  VITA  NUOVA  (The  New  Life). 

This  is  the  earliest  published  work  known  to  have 
been  written  by  Dante.  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  ad- 
dresses it  in  — 

A  Sonnet. 

As  he  that  loves  oft  looks  on  the  dear  form, 

And  guesses  how  it  grew  to  womanhood, 

And  gladly  would  have  watched  the  beauteous  bud 

And  the  mild  fire  of  precious  life  wax  warm, 

So  I,  long  bound  within  the  threefold  charm 
Of  Dante's  love  sublimed  to  heavenly  mood. 
Had  marveled  touching  his  beatitude, 

How  grew  such  presence  from  man's  shameful  swarm — 
At  length,  within  this  book,  I  found  portrayed 
New-born,  that  Paradisal  love  of  his, 

And  simple  like  a  child,  with  whose  clear  aid 
I  understood.     To  such  a  child  as  this, 

Christ,  charging  well  his  chosen  ones,  forbade 

Offense ;  for  "  Lo !  of  such  my  kingdom  is." 

Letter  from  James  Russell  Lowell  to  Professor  Charles 
Eliot  Norton. 

"I  am  very  glad  that  you  are  translating  the  Vita 
Nuova.  It  is  the  best  possible  introduction  to  a  trans- 
cendental understanding  of  the  Divina  Commedia. 
What  an  extraordinary  threefold  nature  was  that  of 
Dante.  The  more  you  study  him,  the  more  sides  you 
find,  and  yet  the  ray  from  him  is  always  pure  white 
light.  I  learn  continually  to  prize  him  more  as  a 
man,  poet,  artist,  moralist,  and  teacher.     Without  him 


48  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

there  were  no  Italy;  and  the  Italian  commentators 
forever  twitching  at  his  sleeve  and  trying  to  make 
him  say  he  is  of  their  way  of  thinking.  Of  their  way, 
indeed!  One  would  think  he  might  be  free  of  them,  at 
least,  in  Paradise.  He  becomes  daily  more  clear  and 
more  mysterious  to  me.  What  a  web  a  man  can 
weave  out  of  his  life,  if  a  man  be  only  a  genius.** 

Professor  Norton*s  translation  of  the  Vita  Nuova  is 
admirably  done.  It  is  a  charming  little  book,  to  be 
read  over  and  over  again  with  delight. 

He  says:  "So  long  as  there  are  lovers  in  the  world, 
and  so  long  as  lovers  are  poets,  this  first  and  tenderest 
love-story  of  modern  literature  will  be  read  with 
appreciation  and  responsive  sympathy. 

The  Vita  Nuova  is  the  story  of  the  love  through 
which  even  in  Dante's  youth  heavenly  things  were 
revealed  to  him,  and  which  in  the  bitterest  trials  of 
life,  in  disappointments,  poverty,  and  exile,  kept  his 
heart  fresh  with  springs  of  perpetual  solace.  It  was 
this  love  which  led  him  through  the  hard  paths  of 
philosophy  and  up  the  steep  ascents  of  Faith,  out  of 
the  Inferno  and  through  Purgatory,  to  the  glories  of 
Paradise  and  the  fulfillment  of  Hope. 

From  the  May  festival  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1274, 
Dante's  Vita  Nuova  began  for  him,  but  he  did  not  tell 
the  world  of  it  until  fifteen  years  later,  when  the  death 
of  his  idol  had  made  all  light  go  out  from  his  life. 

He  had  worshiped  at  her  shrine  nine  long  years 
before  she  graciously  accorded  him  a  salutation,  when 
walking  on  the  street  between  two  other  ladies.  This 
scene  so  agitated  him  that  his  slumbers  were  disturbed 
by  terrific  dreams. 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  49 

Dante  dreamed  that  he  saw  Beatrice  in  the  arms  of 
a  lord  of  terrible  aspect,  no  other  than  Love,  who  held 
in  his  hand  Dante's  own  heart  on  fire,  and  showing  it 
to  the  maiden  just  awaking  from  sleep,  he  made  her 
eat  the  fearful  thing;  then  Love  carried  her  away 
towards  heaven,  wrapped  in  a  crimson  robe. 

When  Dante  awoke  from  this  remarkable  dream, 
he  resolved  to  ask  the  poets  to  explain  it,  and  to  this 
end  he  would  address  them  in  a  sonnet,  as  he  had 
already  the  art  of  rhyme. 

In  canto  ii.  of  the  Purgatorio  (Longfellow's  trans- 
lation), Dante  addresses  his  friend  Casella  thus:  — 

"My  own  Casella!  .  .  . 
If  some  new  law  take  not  from  thee 
Memory  or  practice  of  the  song  of  love, 
Which  used  to  quiet  in  me  all  my  longings, 
Thee  may  it  please  to  comfort  therewithal 
Somewhat  this  soul  of  mine,  that  with  its  body 
Hitherward  coming  is  so  much  distressed." 

Forthwith  began  he  so  melodiously, 
The  melody  within  me  still  is  sounding. 
My  master,  and  myself,  and  all  that  people 
Which  with  him  were,  appeared  as  satisfied 
As  if  naught  else  might  touch  the  mind  of  any. 
We  all  were  moveless  and  attentive 
Unto  his  notes. 

With  exquisite  courtesy  Casella  was  moved  to  sing 
Dante's  own  sonnet  (Professor  Norton's  translation,  in 
the  Vita  Nuova ) :  — 

All  of  my  thoughts  concerning  Love  discourse, 
And  have  in  them  so  great  variety, 


50  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

That  one  to  wish  his  sway  compelleth  me, 
Another  madly  parleys  of  his  force, 
One  hoping,  bringeth  unto  me  delight. 

Another  maketh  me  ofttimes  lament ; 

Only  in  craving  Pity  they  consent. 

Trembling  with  fear  that  in  my  head  hath  site. 
Thus  know  I  not  from  which  my  theme  to  take. 

I  fain  would  speak,  and  know  not  what  to  say, 

In  such  perplexities  of  love  I  live. 

And  if  with  all  to  make  accord  I  strive, 
I  needs  unto  my  very  foe  must  pray, 

My  lady  Pity,  my  defense  to  make. 

Milton,  in  a  sonnet  to  Henry  Lawes,  says  :  — 

Casella,  whom  he  woo'd  to  sing. 

Met  in  the  milder  shades  of  Purgatory. 

In  speaking  of  Plato's  "  Hymn  of  Love,"  in  The 
Banquet,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  calls  it  "the  love 
which  Dante  says  Casella  sang  among  the  angels  in 
Paradise,  and  which  as  rightly  celebrated  in  its  gene- 
sis, fruition,  and  effect  might  well  entrance  the  soul." 

Emerson's  putting  Dante's  Casella  to  sing  a  love- 
song  among  the  angels  of  the  Paradiso  must  be  attrib- 
uted to  his  sublimated  sphere  of  thought,  —  pure 
sestheticismi  Elsewhere  he  accuses  Dante  of  aven- 
ging, in  the  Inferno,  all  his  private  wrongs  in  vindic- 
tive melodies. 

Dante  was  so  great  a  sufferer  from  his  unrequited 
passion,  that  he  came  to  be  at  ease  in  the  presence  of 
ladies  only  when  Beatrice  was  not  present.  Meeting 
a  group  of  fair  ones  one  day,  they  began  to  rally  him 
upon  his  gayety  in  their  presence  and  great  sadness 


51 

whenever  Beatrice  approached.  As  he  could  not  make 
them  understand  his  Platonic  explanations,  he  decided 
to  address  them  collectively. 

Canzone  {Prof.  C.  E.  Norton's  Translation). 

First  Part. 
Ladies  that  have  intelligence  of  Love, 
I  of  my  lady  wish  with  you  to  speak ; 
Not  that  I  can  believe  to  end  her  praise, 
But  to  discourse  that  I  may  ease  my  mind ; 
I  say  that  when  I  think  upon  her  worth. 
So  sweet  doth  Love  make  himself  feel  to  me, 
That  if  I^then  should  lose  not  hardihood. 
Speaking,  I  should  enamor  all  mankind. 
And  I  wish  not  so  loftily  to  speak 
As  to  become,  through  fear  of  failures,  vile. 
But  of  her  gentle  nature  I  will  treat 
In  manner  light  compared  with  her  desert 
(Ye  loving  dames  and  damsels),  with  you. 
For  't  is  nothing  of  which  to  speak  to  others. 

From  the  Vita  Nuova  (Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti's   Translation). 

She  went  along,  crowned  and  clothed  with  such 
humility,  showing  no  whit  of  pride  in  all  that  she 
heard  and  saw,  and  when  she  had  gone  by  it  was  said 
of  many,  "This  is  not  a  woman,  but  one  of  the  beauti- 
ful angels  of  Heaven,"  and  there  were  some  said, 
"This  is  surely  a  miracle.  Blessed  be  the  Lord  who 
hath  power  to  work  thus  marvelously." 

Sonnet. 

My  lady  looks  so  gentle  and  so  pure 
When  yielding  salutation  by  the  way. 
That  the  tongue  trembles  and  has  naught  to  say ; 

And  the  eyes  which  fain  would  see  may  not  endure. 


52  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

And  still  amid  the  praise  she  hears  secure 
She  walks  with  humbleness  for  her  array ; 
Seeming  a  creature  sent  from  Heaven  to  stay- 
On  Earth,  and  show  a  miracle  made  sure. 
She  is  so  pleasant  in  the  eyes  of  man, 
That  through  the  sight  the  inmost  heart  doth  gaze : 
A  sweetness  which  needs  proof  to  know  it  by. 
And  from  between  her  lips  there  seems  to  move 
A  soothing  essence  that  is  full  of  love, 
Saying  forever  to  the  spirit,  "Sigh !  " 


From  the  Vita  Ndova  (C  E.  Norton's  Translation). 

It  may  be  that  some  persons  entitled  to  have  every 
doubt  cleared  away  may  have  been  perplexed  at  my 
speaking  of  Love  as  if  it  were  a  thing  in  itself,  and  not 
only  an  intellectual  substance.  The  which, thing  in 
truth  is  false,  for  love  exists  not  in  itself  as  a  substance, 
but  is  an  accident  in  substance.  .  .  . 

A  greater  license  of  speech  is  granted  to  poets  than 
to  writers  of  prose,  and  as  these  writers  in  rhyme  are 
no  other  than  poets  using  the  vulgar  tongue,  it  is 
fitting  and  reasonable  that  greater  license  should  be 
permitted  to  them  than  to  the  other  writers  in  the 
vulgar  tongue.  That  the  poets  have  thus  spoken  (as 
has  been  said)  appears  from  Virgil,  who  says  that 
Juno — that  is,  a  goddess  hostile  to  the  Trojans — spoke 
to  iEolus,  lord  of  the  winds.  In  this  same  poet  the 
inanimate  thing  speaks  to  the  animate  thing .  In 
Lucan  the  animate  thing  speaks  to  the  inanimate 
thing.  In  Homer,  a  man  speaks  to  his  own  knowl- 
edge as  to  another  person.  In  Ovid,  Love  speaks  as  if 
he  were  a  human  person.  ...  It  would  be  a  great  dis- 
grace to  him  who  should  rhyme  anything  under  the 


I   UNIVERSITY  J 

'^BELOVED    FLORENCE."  53 

garb  of  a  figure  or  of  rhetorical  coloring,  if,  afterward 
being  asked,  he  should  not  be  able  to  denude  his  words 
of  this  garb  in  such  wise  that  they  would  have  a  true 
meaning,  and  my  first  friend  and  I  are  well  acquainted 
with  those  who  rhyme  thus  foolishly. 

This  reference  to  Cavalcanti,that  shows  the  sympathy 
existing  between  him  and  Dante,  is  an  illustration  of 
the  new  literature  and  the  poverty  of  intellectual  cul- 
ture at  the  time  when  the  Vita  Nuova  was  written.  .  .  . 
It  indicates,  also,  something  of  the  range  of  Dante's 
reading;  Virgil  was  already  his  Master  and  poet,  and 
the  four  other  poets  to  whom  he  refers  appear  again  in 
company  in  the  Divina  Commedia  {Inferno,  canto 
iv.,  Longfellow's  translation):  — 

Four  mighty  shades  I  saw  approaching  us ; 

Semblance  had  they,  nor  sorrowful,  nor  glad. 
To  say  to  me,  began  my  gracious  Master: 

"  Him  with  that  falchion  in  his  hand  behold, 

Who  comes  before  the  three,  even  as  their  lord. 
That  one  is  Homer,  poet  sovereign  ! 

He  who  comes  next  is  Horace,  the  Satirist ; 

The  third  is  Ovid  ;  the  last  is  Lucan."  .  .  . 

The  fair  school 
Of  that  lord  of  the  song  pre-eminent, 
Who  o'er  the  others  like  an  eagle  soars. 

When  they  together  had  discoursed  somewhat, 
They  turned  to  me  with  signs  of  salutation, 
And  on  beholding  this,  my  Master  smiled ; 

And  more  of  honor  still,  much  more,  they  did  me, 
In  that  they  made  me  one  of  their  own  band  ; 
So  that  the  sixth  was  I,  'mid'  so  much  wit. 

"The  contrast  between  such  powerful  imaginative 
poetry  as  the  magnificent  and  living  scene  of  which 


54  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

these  verses  form  a  part  and  a  passage,  like  the  literal 
statement  in  the  Vita  Nuova  concerning  poetic  usage 
and  diction,  affords  a  measure  of  the  growth  of 
Dante's  knowledge  and  imagination  from  boyhood  to 
manhood.  .  .  . 

He  was  not  only  poet,  as  the  passage  shows,  but 
critic  also,  and  indeed  this  passage  is  the  first  essa  y 
of  modern  criticism.  The  direct  literary  impulse 
which  Dante  gave  was  to  become  unparalleled." 

We  judge  that  Dante  foresaw  his  own  fame  from 
the  prophecy  that  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Bru- 
netto  Latini:  — 

"  If  thou,"  he  answered,  "  follow  but  thy  star, 
Thou  canst  not  miss  at  last  a  glorious  haven." 

Inferno,  canto  xv. 

Sonnet  (Rossetti's  Tramlation) . 

Love  hath  so  long  possessed  me  for  his  own, 

And  made  his  lordship  so  familiar, 
That  he  who  at  first  irked  me  is  now  grown 

Unto  my  heart  as  its  best  secrets  are. 

And  thus  when  he  in  such  sore  wdse  doth  mar 
My  life,  that  all  its  strength  seems  gone  from  it, 
Mine  inmost  being  then  feels  thoroughly  quit 

Of  anguish,  and  all  evil  keeps  afar. 

I  was  still  occupied  with  this  poem  when  the  Lord 
God  of  justice  called  my  most  gracious  lady  unto 
himself,  that  she  might  be  glorious  under  the  banner 
of  that  blessed  Queen  Mary,  whose  name  had  always 
a  deep  reverence  in  the  words  of  holy  Beatrice. 

Dante's   grief  at  the  death  of  Beatrice   was  exces- 


"BELOVED    FLORENCE."  55 

sive.     He  addressed  the  magistrates  of  the  city,  asking 
their  sympathy  in  Latin  of  dolorous  strains. 

J.  A.  Symonds  says:  We  may  reflect,  not  without 
humor,  upon  the  grave  citizens  of  Florence  receiv- 
ing in  conclave  this  eloquent  epistle  of  the  forlorn 
poet.  Was  their  sunshine  clouded?  Were  there  no 
ballot-boxes  and  votes  of  banishment,  no  cakes  and 
ale  and  civic  banquets,  left,  because,  forsooth,  this 
youngest  of  the  angels  had  been  taken?  .  .  .  The 
death  of  Beatrice  seemed  at  first  to  snap  the  thread  of 
Dante's  life.  She  had  become  a  need  of  his  soul  since 
the  age  of  nine  years.  She  was  the  thought  that  gave 
to  his  soul  its  unity,  the  ceaseless  rhythm  of  its  song. 

Dante  writes,  in  the  Convito,  book  iii.,  chapter  13:  — 
After  some  time  my  mind,  which  strove  to  regain 
strength,  bethought  itself  of  having  recourse  to  the 
method  which  had  helped  to  comfort  other  spirits  in 
distress.  I  took  to  reading  the  book,  not  known  to 
many  students,  of  Boethius,  wherewith,  unhappy  and 
in  exile,  he  had  comforted  himself.  And  hearing 
also  that  Tully  had  written  another  book,  in  which, 
while  treating  of  friendship,  he  had  used  words  of 
consolation  to  Lselius  on  the  death  of  his  friend 
Scipio,  I  read  that  also. 

And  as  it  happens  that  a  man  goes  seeking  silver, 
and,  far  from  his  designs,  finds  gold,  which  hidden 
causes  yield  him,  not  perchance  without  God's  guid- 
ance, so  I,  who  sought  for  consolation,  found  not 
only  comfort  for  my  tears,  but  also  words  of  authors 
and  of  sciences  and  of  books,  weighing  the  which,  I 


56  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

judged  well  that  philosophy,  the  lady  of  these  authors, 
these  sciences,  these  books,  was  a  thing  supreme. 

I  began  to  go  where  she  displayed  her  very  self,  - 
that  is,  in  the  schools  of  the  religions  and  the  disputa- 
tions of  the  philosophers, — so  that  in  a  short  time, 
about  thirty  months,  I  began  so  much  to  feel  her 
sweetness,  that  her  love  chased  away  and  destroyed 
all  other  thought  in  me. 

After  these  words,  we  can  comprehend  Dante's  transi- 
tion from  the  worship  of  Beatrice  as  a  living  woman  to 
a  worship  of  her  as  a  symbol  of  Theology,  exalted  to 
the  Highest  Heavens,  near  the  Great  White  Throne, 
where,  among  angels  and  archangels  (he  himself 
cleansed  and  becoming  purified),  he  beheld  her  enter- 
ing into  the  perfect  Hght  of  the  ray  eternal." 

One  day,  Dante  tells  us,  while  he  was  drawing  the 
resemblance  of  an  angel  (of  course  no  other  than  his 
Beatrice),  he  suddenly  became  conscious  that  some 
persons  were  standing  near  him.  As  he  rose  to  address 
them,  his  simple  words  of  apology  came  from  his 
lonely  heart,  ^^ Another  was  with  mg." 


Robert  Browning.     "One  Word  More." 

Dante  once  prepared  to  paint  an  angel, 

'*  Whom  to  please?"  you  whisper,  '' Beatrice ! " 


Dante,  who  loved  well  because  he  hated, 
Hated  wickedness  that  hinders  loving, 
Dante  standing,  studying  his  angel, 
In  there  broke  the  folk  of  his  Inferno ; 


57 


Says  he,  "Certain  people  of  importance" 
(Such  he  gave  his  daily,  dreadful  line  to) 
Entered,  and  would  seize,  forsooth,  the  poet. 
Says  the  poet,  "Then  I  stopped  my  painting.' 


You  and  I  would  rather  see  that  angel 
Painted  by  the  tenderness  of  Dante, 
Would  we  not?  than  read  a  fresh  Inferno. 


You  and  I  will  never  see  that  picture. 
While  he  mused  on  love  and  Beatrice, 
While  he  softened  o'er  his  outlined  angel, 
In  they  broke,  those  *'  people  of  importance ! " 
We  and  Bice  bear  the  loss  forever. 

It  is  said  that  Cimabue  taught  Dante  in  drawing 
and  Casella  taught  him  in  music. 

Soon  after  the  painting  of  the  angel,  still  dejected, 
gloomy,  a  young  and  beautiful  lady  sat  in  a  window 
where  she  gazed  upon  him  so  pitifully  that  he  became 
grateful  to  her,  and  after  several  such  scenes  on  divers 
occasions,  he  found  a  pleasure  in  her  gentle  eyes. 
At  the  same  time  he  reproached  himself  because  of 
his  pleasure. 

Rossetti  thinks  that  the  lady  became  his  wife. 

Dante  closes  the  Vita  Nuova,  saying:  — 
"It  was  given  to  me  to  behold  a  very  wonderful 
vision,  wherein  I  saw  things  which  determined  me 
that  I  would  say  nothing  further  of  this  most  blessed 
one  until  such  time  as  I  could  discourse  more  worthily 
concerning  her. 

"And  to  this  end  I  labor  all  I  can,  as  she  well  know- 


58  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

eth.  Wherefore,  if  it  be  His  pleasure,  through  whom 
is  the  Ufe  of  all  things,  that  my  life  continue  with 
me  a  few  years,  it  is  my  hope  that  I  shall  yet  write 
concerning  her  what  hath  not  before  been  written  of 
any  woman.  After  the  which  may  it  seem  good  unto 
Him  who  is  the  Master  of  grace,  that  my  spirit  should 
go  hence  to  behold  the  glory  of  its  lady,  to  wit,  of 
that  blessed  Beatrice,  who  now  gazeth  continually 
on  His  countenance,  who  is  blessed  throughout  all 
ages." 

This  extraordinary  wish  received  its  high  consum- 
mation when  the  ardent  lover,  poet,  and  seer  had 
written  the  last  line  of  the  trinity  of  the  Divina 
Commedia,  "  The  love  which  moves  the  sun  and  all  the 
stars.^^ 

"  Of  a  surety,"  he  says,  "  I  have  now  set  my  feet  on 
that  point  of  life  beyond  the  which  he  must  not  pass 
who  would  return." 

Never  in  Dante's  writings  does  he  speak  of  Beatrice 
as  a  bride  (except  of  Heaven!).  Where  he  speaks  of 
a  visit  from  "one  who  had  been  united  by  the  near- 
est kindred  to  that  most  gracious  creature,"  C.  E. 
Norton  thinks  the  reference  was  to  the  brother  of 
Beatrice.  Nor  does  Beatrice  allude  to  it  in  those 
touching  interviews  of  the  other  world.  This  marriage 
did  not  form  a  part  of  Dante's  philosophical  theory! 
It  is  only  from  a  clause  in  the  will  left  by  Beatrice's 
father  that  the  learned  commentators  know  of  her 
marriage  at  all. 

True  to  his  love,  he  sought  no  wedded  bliss  for  him- 
self until  after  the  death  of  Beatrice  at  the  early 
age  of   twenty-four;  and   then,   only   at  the   earnest 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  69 

persuasions  of  his  family  relatives,  he  married  Gemma 
Donati,  a  lady  of  fine  appearance  and  distinguished 
family. 

Boccaccio  thinks  that  they  did  not  live  happily 
together,  because  the  wife  did  not  join  her  husband 
in  his  exile.  How  could  she,  with  her  seven  chil- 
dren? Dante  could  not  support  them,  as  his  entire 
estate  had  been  confiscated.  Literally  a  wanderer, 
he  trod  the  wine-press  alone!  Such  solitary  destiny 
was  decreed,  and  we  have  for  all  time  (and  eternity 
too)  our  Dante  and  the  Divina  Commedia. 


60  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

PART   III. 

THE   DIVINA   COMMEDIA. 

H.  W.  Longfellow. 

How  strange  the  sculptures  that  adorn  these  towers! 
This  crowd  of  statues,  in  whose  folded  sleeves 
Birds  build  their  nests  ;  w^hile  canopied  with  leaves, 
Parvis  and  portal  bloom  like  trellised  bowers. 

And  the  vast  minster  seems  a  cross  of  flowers !  .  .  . 

Ah !  from  what  agonies  of  heart  and  brain, 
What  exultations  trampling  on  despair, 
What  tenderness,  what  tears,  what  hate  of  wrong, 

What  passionate  outcry  of  a  soul  in  pain. 
Uprose  this  poem  of  the  earth  and  air, 
This  mediaeval  miracle  of  song ! 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  61 

The  Divina  Commedia  (quoting  from  James  Rus- 
sell Lowell)  is  in  three  parts,  each  part  in  thirty- 
three  cantos,  in  allusion  to  the  thirty-three  years  of 
our  Saviour's  life.  The  poem  considers,  in  its  three 
divisions,  the  threefold  state  of  man,  —  sin,  grace,  and 
beatitude.  It  is  written  in  triple  rhyme,  emblematic 
of  the  Trinity. 

The  model  of  the  poem  is  the  Christian  Basilica 
— the  ethnic  fore-court  of  those  who  know  not  God; 
the  purgatorial  middle  space  of  repentance,  confes- 
sion, and  absolution;  the  altar  of  reconciliation,  beyond 
and  over  which  hangs  the  emblem  of  the  Mediator, 
of  the  divine  made  human,  that  the  human  might 
learn  to  become  divine.  Here  are  general  rules  in 
which  every  Christian  may  find  comfort. 

But  the  poem  comes  nearer  to  us  than  this.  It  is 
the  real  history  of  a  brother  man,  tempted,  purified, 
and,  at  last,  a  triumphant  soul.  ...  It  teaches  the 
benign  ministry  of  sorrow.  ...  It  is  also  an  apothe- 
osis of  woman. 

J.  A.  Symonds. 
The  Divina  Commedia  lies  before  us!    Let  us  un- 
cover our  heads,  therefore,  and  say  in  the  great  words 
of  Ennius:  — 

Hail  Poet !  who  for  mortal  man  dost  pour 

Strong  wine  of  words  that  burn  and  sense  that  soars, 

Drawn  from  thy  bleeding  bosom's  fiery  core, 
And  tempered  with  the  bitter  fount  of  tears ! 

This  is  the  proper  salutation  for  the  man  who  fed 
his  poem  with  the  life-blood  and  the  marrow  of  his 
soul  through  years  which  made  him  gray  and  gaunt. 


62  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

From  Hargreave's  *' Literary  Workers." 

There  comes  a  man  of  sorrowful  countenance,  with 
a  hreast  furrowed  by  a  thousand  woes,  and  in  him 
you  see  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  explorers 
of  the  territories  of  the  Imagination  the  world  has 
ever  produced.  He  tells  how  he  passed  the  dolorous 
gates  through  which  hope  could  never  force  her  way, 
was  ferried  over  the  fiery  lake,  trod  the  nine  circles  of 
the  Inferno,  shrank  aghast  from  their  terrific  spec- 
tacles, or  quailed  under  their  tempestuous  cries,  and 
then  informs  us  how  the  unwearied  Muse,  emerging 
from  this  realm  of  horrors,  toiled  through  the  tedious 
zones  of  Purgatorio,  pursuing  hef  way  into  the  happier 
spheres  of  Paradiso;  ...  all  the  incidents  of  this 
fearful  journey  being  detailed  with  as  much  graphic 
minuteness  as  if  he  had  been  traveling  on  the  most 
solid  soil. 

THE  INFERNO. 
H.  W.  Longfellow. 
I  enter,  and  I  see  thee  in  the  gloom 
Of  the  long  aisles,  O  poet  saturnine ! 
And  strive  to  make  my  steps  keep  pace  with  thine. 
The  air  is  filled  with  some  unknown  perfume ; 
The  congregation  of  the  dead  make  room 
For  thee  to  pass  ;  the  votive  tapers  shine ; 
Like  rooks  that  haunt  Ravenna's  groves  of  pine, 
The  hovering  echoes  fly  from  tomb  to  tomb. 
From  the  confessionals  I  hear  arise 
Rehearsals  of  forgotten  tragedies, 
And  lamentations  from  the  crypts  below ; 
And  then  a  voice  celestial,  that  begins 
With  the  pathetic  words,  "Although  your  sins 
As  scarlet  be,"  and  ends  with  '*  as  the  snow." 


63 


THE  INFERNO. 


This  first  book  of  the  Divina  Commedia  opens  upon 
the  evening  of  Good  Friday,  1300  A.D. 

The  poet  describes  himself  as  midway  in  life  (he 
was  thirty-five),  entering  a  dark  forest  and  encounter- 
ing fearful  dangers  from  a  leopard,  afterwards  a  lion, 
next  a  wolf.  His  courage  almost  gone,  he  was  rushing 
"downward  to  the  lowlands"  for  safety,  when  he  was 
met  by  Virgil,  who  had  been  deputed  by  Beatrice  to 
meet  and  conduct  him  through  the  perils  of  the  lower 
world  and  lead  him  upward,  purified,  sanctified,  and 
ready  for  her  companionship  in  Paradise. 

Dante  had  been  a  devoted  student  of  Virgil,  so  was 
overjoyed  when  the  great  spirit-poet  made  himself 
known,  and  thus  he  addressed  him:  — 

''And  art  thou,  then,  that  Virgil,  that  well-spring 
From  which  such  copious  floods  of  eloquence 
Have  issued?"     I  with  front  abashed  replied, 
"Glory  and  light  of  all  the  tuneful  train ! 
May  it  avail  me,  that  I  long  with  zeal 
Have  sought  thy  volume,  and  with  love  immense 
Have  conned  it  o'er !     My  master,  thou,  and  guide ! 
Thou  he  from  whom  alone  I  have  derived 
That  style  which  for  its  beauty  into  fame 

Gary's  Translation. 

The  admiration  for  Virgil  was  universal  in  Dante's 
time.  At  Milan  one  can  see  in  the  Ambrosian  Library 
the  well-worn  copy  of  Virgil  that  belonged  to  Petrarch. 
On  the  blank  leaves  he  had  written  the  name  and 
praises  of  his  Laura,  "that  they  might  oftenest  meet 
his   eye,"   he  said.     Why  could  not  kind  fate  have 


64  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

spared  to  us  Dante's  Virgil,  with  one  sonnet  to  his 
Beatrice  traced  by  his  own  hand? 

Leigh  Hunt  thus  describes  geologically  the  situation 
of  the  Inferno:  "It  descends  from  beneath  Jerusalem 
to  the  center  of  the  earth,  and  is  a  funnel,  graduated 
in  circles,  each  circle  being  a  separate  place  of  torment 
for  a  different  vice,  the  point  of  the  funnel  terminating 
with  Satan  stuck  into  ice."  The  allegorical  ItaHan 
Illustrators  followed  this  idea  to  the  full  in  their 
pyramidal  representations  of  Dante's  poem. 

Milman  says,  in  his  History  of  Christiantty, "  Dante  is 
the  one  authorized  topographer  of  the  mediaeval  Hell." 

Ruskin  writes  of  it  in  Modern  Painters:  ''Milton's 
effort  in  all  that  he  tells  us  of  his  Inferno  is  to  make 
it  indefinite;  Dante's,  to  make  it  definite.  Both,  in- 
deed, describe  it  as  entered  through  gates;  but,  within 
the  gate,  all  is  wild  and  fenceless,  with  Milton.  .  .  . 
Dante's  Inferno  is  accurately  separated  into  circles 
drawn  with  well-pointed  compasses,  mapped,  and  prop- 
erly surveyed  in  every  direction,  trenched  in  a  thor- 
oughly good  style  of  engineering  from  depth  to  depth." 

The  story  of  Francesca  da  Rimini,  in  canto  v.,  is 
better  known,  perhaps,  than  any  other  of  the  Inferno. 

As  Dante  saw  the  two  lovers  approaching  them, 
"so  light  before  the  wind,"  he  asked  permission  of 
Virgil  to  address  them,  which  being  granted,  he  en- 
treated them  and  they  came,  — 

"As  doves, 
By  fond  desire  invited,  on  wide  wings 
And  firm,  to  their  sweet  nests  returning  home 
Cleave  the  air,  wafted  by  their  will  along," 

they  approached  and  told  their  sad  tale. 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  65 

"  No  greater  grief  than  to  remember  days 
Of  joy  when  mis'ry  is  at  hand !     That  kens 
The  learn'd  instructor." 

Perhaps,  since  Dante,  no  writer  has  touched  the 
tragedy  of  Paolo  and  Francesca  so  exquisitely  and 
powerfully  as  Stephen  Phillips  in  his  dramatic  poem, 
A  Tragedy. 

In  act  iv.:  — 

Francesca.    And  yet  I  fear  to  see  thy  air  so  glad  — 

Paolo.    What  do  you  fear? 
Francesca.     One  watches  quietly. 
Paolo.     Who? 

Francesca.    I  know  not ;  perhaps  the  quiet  face 
Of  God :  the  eternal  Listener  is  near. 

Paolo's  passionate  appeal  beginning — 
"What  can  we  fear,  we  two?  " 

is  strikingly  similar  in  sentiment,  intensity,  reckless 
fervor,  and  even  the  form  of  expression,  to  Lowell's 
sonnet. 

Us,  then  whose  only  pain  can  be  to  part, 

How  wilt  thou  punish?    For  what  ecstasy 

Together  to  be  blown  about  the  globe 

What  rapture.  .  .  .  ^^^^^^^  Phillips. 


Us,  undivided  when  man's  vengeance  came, 
God's,  half-forgives  that  doth  not  here  divide, 
And  were  this  bitter  whirl-blast  fanged  with  flame, 
To  me,  't  were  summer,  being  side  by  side. 

From  James  Russell  LoioelVs  Sonnet  to  Paolo  and  Francesca. 


66  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

From  Carlyle's  "Heroes  and  Hero- Worship." 

Francesca  and  her  lover!  What  quahties  in  that! 
A  thing  woven  as  out  of  rainbows  on  a  ground  of 
eternal  black.  A  small  flute  voice  of  infinite  wail 
speaks  there  into  our  very  heart  of  hearts  —  a  touch 
of  womanhood  in  it,  too  —  and  how,  even  in  the  pit  of 
woe,  it  is  a  solace  that  he  will  never  part  from  her.  .  .  . 
And  the  racking  winds  whirl  them  away  again  to  wail 
forever.  Strange  to  think,  Dante  was  the  friend  of 
this  poor  Francesca's  father;  Francesca  herself  may 
have  sat  upon  the  poet's  knee  as  a  bright,  innocent 
child.  Infinite  pity,  yet  also  infinite  rigor  of  law!  It 
is  so  nature  is  made;  it  is  so  Dante  discerned  it. 

FRANCESCA  DA  RIMINI. 

T.  W.  Parsons. 
You  restless  ghosts  that  roam  the  lurid  air, 
I  feel  your  misery,  for  I  was  there ; 
Yea,  not  in  dreams,  but  breathing  and  alive ; 
Have  seen  the  storm  and  heard  the  tempest  drive, 
Yet  while  the  sleet  went  withering  as  it  past, 
And  the  mad  hail  gave  scourges  to  the  blast, 
While  all  was  black  below  and  flame  above. 
Have  thought  —  't  is  little  to  the  storm  of  Love  I 
You  know  that  sadly,  know  it  to  your  cost, 
Ah  I    Too  much  loving,  and  forever  lost. 


67 


JOHN  RUSKIN   (Modern  Painters). 

When  Dante  describes  the  spirits  falling  from  the 
bank  of  Acheron  (canto  iii.)  as  dead  leaves  flutter  from 
a  bough,  he  gives  the  most  perfect  image  possible  of 
their  utter  lightness,  feebleness,  passiveness,  and  scat- 
tering agony  of  despair,  without,  however,  for  an  in- 
stant losing  his  own  clear  perception  that  these  are 
souls  and  those  are  leaves;  he  makes  no  confusion  of 
one  with  the  other.  .  .  . 

Dante,  in  his  most  intense  moods,  has  entire  com- 
mand of  himself,  and  can  look  around  calmly  at  all 
moments  for  the  image  or  the  word  that  will  best  tell 
what  he  sees  to  the  upper  world. 

Indeed,  Dante  said  that  no  word  had  ever  made 
him  say  what  he  did  not  choose  to  say. 

Ruskin  says  of  the  word  "enamel,"  in  canto  iv.:  "  It 
is  the  first  instance  I  know  of  its  right  use.  Dante 
did  not  use  this  phrase  as  we  use  it.  Dante  means,  in 
using  this  metaphor  of  the  grass  of  the  Inferno,  to 
mark  that  it  is  laid  as  a  tempering  and  cooling  sub- 
stance over  the  dark,  metallic,  gloomy  ground,  but  yet 
so  hardened  by  the  fire  that  it  is  not  any  more  fresh 
or  living  grass,  but  a  smooth,  silent,  lifeless  bed  of 
eternal  green.  .  .  .  The  same  word  was  used  by  the 
Gorgons  when  they  caught  sight  of  Dante,  and  would 
have  turned  him  into  enamel  —  stone  was  not  hard 
enough,  stone  might  crumble  away,  or  something  with 
life  might  grow  upon  it.  .  .  ." 

Ruskin's  chapters  entitled  "The  Rocks"  and  "The 
Forests  "  are  delightful  reading  for  the  study  of  Dante. 


68  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

In  the  twenty-first  canto,  Dante  compares  one  of  the 
deep  fissures  in  the  Inferno's  depths  to  the  arsenal  of 
the  Venetians,  where 

"  Boils  in  the  winter  the  tenacious  pitch, 
To  smear  their  unsound  vessels  o'er  again." 

Of  this  arsenal  Mr.  Hillard  says,  in  his  Six  Months  in 
Italy:  "  No  reader  of  Dante  will  fail  to  pay  a  visit  to  the 
arsenal,^  from  which,  in  order  to  illustrate  the  terrors 
of  his  Inferno,  the  great  poet  drew  one  of  those  striking 
and  picturesque  images,  characteristic  alike  of  the 
boldness  and  the  power  of  his  genius,  which  never 
hesitated  to  look  for  its  materials  among  the  homely 
details  and  familiar  incidents  of  life.  In  his  hands 
the  boiling  of  pitch  and  the  calking  of  seams  ascend 
to  the  dignity  of  poetry." 

Into  this  boiling  pitch  Dante  consigned  the  "Bar- 
rators," or  those  in  public  office  who  made  use  of  their 
position  to  sell  and  make  money  out  of  the  patronage 
in  their  power. 

Inferno,  Canto  XXXI.  58-60  (Longfellow's  Translation). 

The  giant  Nimrod  is  described :  — 

"  His  face  appeared  to  me  as  long  and  large 
As  is  at  Rome  the  pine-cone  of  Saint  Peter's ; 
And  in  proportion  were  the  other  bones." 

Professor  Norton  says:  "  This  pine-cone  of  bronze  was 
set  originally  upon  the  summit  of  the  mausoleum  of 
Hadrian.     After  this  imperial  sepulchre  had  under- 

*The  arsenal  of  Venice  is  not  now  in  the  glory  of  Dante's 
day,  nor  can  visitors  to  the  arsenal  see  *'  the  boiling  pitch." 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  69 

gone  many  evil  fates,  and  as  its  ornaments  were 
stripped  one  by  one  from  it,  the  cone  was  in  the 
sixth  century  taken  down  and  carried  off  to  adorn  a 
fountain,  which  had  been  constructed  for  the  use  of 
dusty  and  thirsty  pilgrims  in  a  pillared  inclosure, 
called  the  Paradiso,  in  front  of  the  old  Basilica  of 
Saint  Peter's.  Here  it  remained  for  centuries,  and 
when  the  old  church  gave  way  to  the  new,  it  was  put 
where  it  now  stands,  useless  and  out  of  place,  in  the 
trim  and  formal  gardens  of  the  Papal  palace.  It 
serves  the  bronze-workers  of  Rome  as  a  model  for  an 
inkstand,  and  is  sold  to  travelers,  few  of  whom  know 
the  history  and  the  poetry  belonging  to  its  original.^ 

Inferno,  Canto  XXXIII.  80-85. 

The  terrible  tragedy  of  the  death,  by  famine,  of  Count 
Ugolino  and  his  innocent  grandsons  is  told  by  Dante 
in  burning  language,  and  draws  forth  a  scathing  re- 
buke. 

Ah  !  Pisa,  thou  opprobrium  of  the  people 

Of  the  fair  land  there  where  the  si  doth  sound, 
Since  slow  to  punish  thee  thy  neighbors  are, 

Let  the  Capraia  and  Gorgona  move. 
And  make  a  hedge  across  the  mouth  of  Arno, 

That  every  person  in  thee  it  may  drown ! 
For  if  Count  Ugolino  had  the  fame 

Of  having  in  thy  castles  thee  betrayed. 
Thou  should' st  not  on  such  cross  have  put  his  sons. 

Longfelloiv' 8  Translation. 

^  We  found  the  pine-cone  as  Professor  Norton  describes  it. 
Thanks  to  him,  for  no  one  of  whom  we  inquired,  nor  even  the 
guide,  had  ever  heard  of  the  pine-cone. 


70  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

THE  TOWER  OF  FAMINE. 

Chaucer,  in  the  "Monk's  Tale." 
Of  this  tragedie  it  ought  enough  suffice, 
Whoso  will  here  it  in  a  longer  wise 
Redeth  the  great  poete  of  Itaillie, 
That  brighte  Dante,  for  he  can  it  devise 
Fro'  point  to  point,  not  a  word  Tsill  he  faille. 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 
Amid  the  desolation  of  a  city 
Which  was  the  cradle  and  is  now  the  grave 
Of  an  extinguished  people,  so  that  pity 
Weeps  o'er  the  shipwrecks  of  oblivion's  wave, 
There  stands  the  Tower  of  Famine. 

There  are  indeed  "men  whose  souls  are  like  the  sea." 

Victor  Hugo's  "William  Shakespeare." 
Those  billows  that  ebb  and  flood,  that  inexorable 
going  and  coming,  that  noise  of  all  the  winds,  that 
blackness  and  that  translucency,  that  vegetation  pecu- 
liar to  the  deep,  that  democracy  of  clouds  in  full  hurri- 
cane, those  eagles  flecked  with  foam,  those  wonderful 
star-risings  reflected  in  mysterious  agitations  by  mil- 
lions of  luminous  wave-tops,  confused  heads  of  the 
multitudinous  sea;  the  errant  lightnings  which  seemed 
to  watch  those  prodigious  sobbings,  those  half-seen 
monsters,  those  nights  of  darkness  broken  by  howUngs, 
those  furies,  those  frenzies,  those  torments,  those  rocks, 
those  shipwrecks,  those  fleets  crushing  each  other, 
mingling  their  human  thunders  with  the  divine 
thunders,  and  staining  the  sea  with  blood ;  —  then  that 
charm,  that  mildness,  those  festivals,  those  gay  white 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  71 

sails,  those  fishing-boats,  those  songs  amid  the  uproar, 
those  shining  ports,  those  mists  rising  from  the  shore, 
those  cities  at  the  horizon's  edge,  that  deep  blue  of  sky 
and  water,  that  useful  asperity,  that  bitter  savor  which 
keeps  the  world  wholesome,  that  harsh  salt  without 
which  all  would  putrefy;  those  wraths  and  those  ap- 
peasements —  that  all  in  one,  the  unforeseen  amid  the 
changeless,  the  vast  marvel  of  inexhaustibly  varied 
monotony,  that  smoothness  after  an  upheaval,  those 
hells  and  those  heavens  of  the  unfathomed,  infinite, 
ever-moving  deep — all  this  may  exist  in  a  mind  — 
and  then  that  mind  is  called  genius  —  and  you  have 
^schylus,  you  have  Isaiah,  you  have  Juvenal,  you 
have  Dante,  you  have  Michael  Angelo,  you  have 
Shakespeare;  and  it  is  all  one,  whether  you  look  at 
these  souls  or  at  the  Sea! 


From  "Balder."     (Sydney  Dobell.) 

Doctor.  Ah!  thou  too 

Sad  Alighieri,  like  a  waning  moon, 
Setting  in  storm  behind  a  grove  of  bays  I 

Balder.       Yes,  the  great  Florentine  who  wove  his  web 
And  thrust  it  into  hell,  and  drew  it  forth 
Immortal,  having  burned  all  that  could  burn, 
And  leaving  only  what  shall  still  be  found 
Untouched,  nor  with  the  smell  of  fire  upon  it, 
Under  the  final  ashes  of  this  world. 

Maria  Francesca  Rossetti,  in  her  Shadow  of  Dante: 
"  Some  there  are  who,  gazing  upon  Dante's  Hell,  mainly 
with  their  own  eyes,  are  startled  by  the  grotesque  ele- 
ment throughout  the  Cantica  as  a  whole,  and  shocked 


72  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

at  the  ludicrous  tone  of  not  a  few  of  its  parts.  Others 
seek  rather  to  gaze  on  Dante's  Hell  with  Dante's  eyes; 
these  discern  in  that  grotesqueness  a  realized  horror, 
in  that  ludicrousness  a  sovereign  contempt  of  evil.  .  ,  . 
Dante's  Lucifer  does  appear  'less  than  an  archangel 
ruined,'  immeasurably  less;  for  he  appears  a  seraph 
willfully  fallen.  No  illusive  splendor  is  here  to  dazzle 
eye  and  mind  into  sympathy  with  rebellious  pride;  no 
vagueness  to  shroud  in  mist  things  fearful  or  things 
abominable.  Dante's  devils  are  hateful  and  hated; 
Dante's  reprobates,  loathsome  and  loathed,  despicable 
and  despised,  or,  at  best,  miserable  and  commiserated. 
Dante  is  guiltless  of  seducing  any  soul  of  man  tow- 
ards making  or  calling  Evil  his  God." 

Dante  said  that  he  found  the  original  of  his  hell  in 
the  world  that  he  inhabited,  and  yet  the  ''  Sources  of 
the  Inferno  "  is  a  theme  much  discussed  by  savants  to 
this  day.  Bottari,  the  literary  antiquary,  unearthed 
The  Vision  of  Alberico,  and  behold!  Dante  had  stolen 
it.  It  was  a  dull,  heavy  thing,  written  by  a  monk, 
in  Latin. 

One  critic  goes  back  to  Dante's  scholarly  instructor, 
Ser  Brunetto  Latini,  and  considers  his  Tesoretto  the 
model  for  the  Divine  Comedy.  "  If  any  one  can 
imagine  this,"  writes  Zannoni,  who  edited  the  work, 
"  he  must  confess  that  a  slight  and  almost  invisible 
spark  served  to  kindle  a  vast  conflagration." 

Visions  are  as  old  as  the  world,  and  will  continue 
while  time  endures.  Dante  is  a  genius,  and  original, 
or  he  is  nothing.  Every  part  of  his  poem  corresponds 
to  an  epoch  of  his  life.     The  Inferno  came  into  the 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE/'  73 

first  gloomy  years  of  exile.  His  stay  in  Paris  followed, 
and  lends  its  brighter  tone  to  the  Purgatorio.  Peace 
came  in  "The  Paradiso," — with  hope  of  a  life  beyond. 

Dante's  journey  thus  far  has  occupied  two  days  and 
nights.  He  has  now  come  to  the  early  dawn  of  Easter 
Sunday. 

The  Guide  and  I  unto  that  hidden  road 

Now  entered  to  return  to  the  bright  world, 
And  without  care  of  having  any  rest, 

We  mounted  up,  he  first  and  I  the  second. 
Till  I  beheld  through  a  round  aperture 

Some  of  the  beauteous  things  that  Heaven  doth  bear ; 
Thence  we  came  forth  to  re-behold  the  stars. 

Longfellow's  Translation. 


74  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

PART  IV. 
THE  PURGATORIO. 

SCHELLING. 

"  The  Purgatorio  must  be  recognized  as  the  pictu- 
resque part  of  the  poem.  Not  only  are  the  penances 
here  imposed  upon  sinners  pictorially  treated  even  to 
brightness  of  coloring,  but  the  journey  up  the  holy 
mountain  of  Purgatory  presents  in  detail  a  rapid  suc- 
cession of  shifting  landscapes,  scenes,  and  manifold 
play  of  light,  until  upon  its  outermost  boundary, 
when  the  poet  has  reached  the  waters  of  Lethe,  the 
highest  pomp  of  painting  and  color  displays  itself." 

Not  unwillingly  do  we  leave  the  Inferno's  doleful 
regions  to  ascend,  with  the  Itahan  pilgrims,  to  the 
"  milder  shades  of  Purgatory." 

Purgatory  is  represented  as  a  mountain  rising  out 
of  the  Southern  Ocean,  exactly  opposite  Mount  Zion,  in 
Jerusalem.  It  is  divided  into  seven  terraces,  in  which 
are  detained  those  whom  Dante  selected  as  needing 
punishment  for  seven  deadly  sins:  Pride,  Avarice, 
Envy,  Anger,  Sloth,  Lust,  Gluttony. 

It  is  a  toilsome  place  enough,  but  it  comes  bearing 
the  torch  of  Hope  after  a  long  night  of  despair.  Leigh 
Hunt  says,  "  Even  in  a  theological  point  of  view  they 
are  something  like  a  bit  of  Christian  refreshment  after 
the  horrors  of  the  Inferno." 

Dante  says  (canto  i.,  Gary's  translation):  — 


75 

Well  pleased  to  leave  so  cruel  sea  behind ; 
And  of  that  second  region  will  I  sing, 
In  which  the  human  spirit  from  sinful  blot 
Is  purged,  and  for  ascent  to  Heaven  prepares. 

To  the  right  hand  I  turn'd,  and  fix'd  my  mind 
On  the  other  pole  attentive,  where  I  saw 
Four  stars  ne'er  seen  before  save  by  the  ken 
Of  our  first  parents.     Heaven  of  their  rays 
Seem'd  joyous.     O  thou  northern  site  !  bereft 
Indeed  and  widow'd,  since  of  these  deprived." 

Was  Dante  inspired  to  see  the  Southern  Cross,  not 
named  until  after  his  time? 

Turning  a  little  to  the  other  pole, 

There  where  the  Wain  had  disappeared  already, 

I  saw  a  venerable  old  man — it  was  Cato ; 

Low  down  his  beard,  and  mixed  with  hoary  white 

Descended,  like  his  locks, 'which  parting,  fell 

Upon  his  breast  in  double  fold." 

The  beams  of  the  bright  stars  fell  upon  his  face. 
Dante  bent  his  knee  in  reverence  as  Cato  addressed 
them:  — 

"  Say  who  are  ye,  that  stemming  the  blind  stream, 
Forth  from  the  eternal  prison-house  have  fled?" 

Virgil  replied  in  most  eloquent  speech,  begging  Cato 
for  the  love  of  Marcia  to  permit  them  to  pass  through 
his  seven-fold  realm.  Upon  which  Cato  moved  those 
"venerable  plumes"  (his  beard),  and  with  a  gentle 
rebuke  to  Virgil  ("  no  flattery  is  needful")  for  his  over- 
much praise,  he  proceeded  to  give  him  instructions 
how  to  prepare  Dante  for  the  trying  ordeal:  — 


76       ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

"...  With  a  slender  reed 
See  that  thou  duly  gird  him,  and  his  face 
Lave,  till  all  sordid  stain  thou  wipe  from  thence. 
For  not  with  eye  by  any  cloud  obscur'd, 
Would  it  be  seemly  before  him  to  come, 
Who  stands  the  foremost  minister  in  Heaven." 


When  we  had  come,  where  yet  the  tender  dew 

Shone  with  the  sun,  and  in  a  place  where  fresh 

The  wind  breathed  o'er  it,  while  it  slowly  dried ; 

Both  hands  extended  on  the  watery  grass, 

My  master  placed,  in  graceful  act  and  kind. 

Whence  I,  of  his  intent  before  apprized. 

Stretch 'd  out  to  him  my  cheeks  suffused  with  tears — 

There  to  my  visage  he  anew  restored 

That  hue  which  the  dun  shades  of  hell  concealed. 

Then  Virgil  •  girded  Dante  with  a  reed,  plucking 
many  before  the  right  one  was  found. 

Whether  one  was  plucked,  another  there 
Resembling,  straightway  in  its  place  arose. 

We  think  of  the  baptism  of  Christ;  of  the  reed 
placed  in  His  right  hand  when  led  away  to  His  cruci- 
fixion; of  the  reed  shaken  by  the  wind. 

Lingering  by  the  trembling  waters,  the  pilgrims  saw 
God's  angel. 

He  drove  ashore  in  a  small  bark  so  swift 
And  light,  that  in  its  course  no  wave  it  drank. 

With  the  angel  came  a  multitude  of  souls,  who  gazed 
with  wondering  astonishment  at  the  strange  new- 
comers.    Among  them  was  Casella,  who,  — 

.  .  .  Darting  before  the  rest 
With  such  fond  ardor  to  embrace  me,  I 
To  do  the  like  was  moved.    O  shadows  vain 


ROSSETTI'S    DANTE. 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "  BELOVED  FLORENCE."   79 

Except  in  outward  semblance !  thrice  my  hands 
I  clasp'd  behind  it,  they  as  oft  returned 
Empty  into  my  breast  again. 

But  Casella  could  sing,  and  was  still  enchanting 
his  listeners  on  the  shore  of  those  "  trembling  waters," 
when  Cato  warned  them  to  begone  to  the  mountain. 

How  real  it  all  seems ! 

The  simile  of  the  sheep,  in  canto  iii.,  is  pronounced 
by  Macaulay  to  be  the  most  perfect  of  its  kind  in  the 
world,  —  the  most  imaginative,  the  most  picturesque, 
and  the  most  sweetly  expressed. 

The  simile  is  drawn  from  the  movement  of  a  crowd 
of  spirits  on  the  crags  of  the  steep  bank,  who  were 
startled  at  the  sight  of  Dante's  shadow  lying  along 
the  ground — for  spirits  cast  no  shadows. 

Virgil's  interview  with  Sordello,  in  canto  vi.,  is  most 
interesting  (Longfellow's  translation):  — 

.  .  .  O  Lombard  soul ! 
How  lofty  and  disdainful  thou  did'st  bear  thee, 
And  grand  and  slow  in  moving  of  thine  eyes. 

"...  0  Mantuan,  I  am  Sordello 

Of  thine  own  land,"  and  one  embraced  the  other. 

Gary  says  that  Sordello's  life  is  wrapped  in  obscurity. 
A  writer  of  Provengal  poetry,  he  was  prominent  as  a 
Ghibelline,  and  was  a  knight  who  aspired  to  deeds  of 
valor. 

Sordello.     (Robert  Browning.) 
For  he,  for  he, 
Gate-vein  of  this  hearts'  blood  of  Lombardy, 
(If  I  should  falter  now !)  for  he  is  thine ! 
Sordello,  thy  forerunner,  Florentine ! 


80  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

The  opening  of  the  eighth  canto  is  very  beautiful:  — 

Now  was  the  time  that  wakens  fond  desire 
In  men  at  sea,  and  melts  their  thoughtful  heart 
Who  in  the  morn  have  bid  sweet  friends  farewell ! 
And  pilgrim  newly  on  his  road  with  love 
Thrills,  if  he  hear  the  vesper  bell  from  far 
That  seems  to  mourn  for  the  expiring  day." 

Macaulay  says:  "  Dante's  temper  and  his  situation 
had  led  him  to  fix  his  observation  almost  exclusively 
on  human  nature. 

"  To  other  writers  evening  may  be  the  season  of  dews 
and  stars  and  radiant  clouds;  to  him  it  is  the  hour 
of  fond  recollection  and  of  passionate  devotion,  the 
hour  which  melts  the  heart." 

In  canto  xxi.  is  a  suggestion  for  an  explanation  of 
the  meaning  of  the  temblors  that  so  frequently  visit 
some  parts  of  our  fair  earth,  that  (to  our  knowledge) 
has  never  been  quoted  by  scientists  of  modern  times, 
whose  puzzled  brains  are  sending  out  all  imaginable 
and  unimaginable  solutions  of  the  mysterious  sources 
of  these  grewsome  visitants,  but  the  poet's  exquisite 
conception  is  too  lofty  to  be  of  the  earth,  earthy. 

Dante  says  of  the  trembling  of  the  mountain:  — 

"  It  trembles  here  whenever  any  soul 
Feels  itself  pure,  so  that  it  soars  or  moves 
To  mount  aloft." 

Canon  Farrar  says:  "  Sometimes  in  a  single  line 
Dante  infuses  a  moral  lesson  which  is  a  moral  given 
for  life.  One  lesson  that  he  teaches  is,  that  the  for- 
giveness of  sin  is  one  thing  and  the  remission  of  sin 
another.     The  spirits  in  Purgatory  do  not  feel  worthy 


O-   T'rlc 

UNIVERSITY 

OF  . 

81 

to  see  God  until  the  angels  have  brushed  from  their  fore- 
heads the  seven  letters  which  stand  for  the  seven  sins. 

"  That  punishment  is  the  easiest  to  bear  which  fol- 
lows soonest  on  the  sin.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  solely  by  realizing  such  truths  that  any  one 
of  us  can  attain  the  ideal  which  Dante  wanted  to  pic- 
ture forth  before  us  and  help  us  to  attain;  the  ideal  of 
one  who  in  boyhood  is  gentle  and  obedient  and  modest, 
in  youth  is  temperate,  resolute,  and  loyal,  in  ripe  years 
is  prudent,  just,  and  generous,  and  who  in  age  has  at- 
tained to  calm  wisdom  and  to  perfect  peace  in  God." 

While  the  Purgatorio  falls  below  the  Inferno  in 
intense  over-excitement,  its  interest  increases  step  by 
step,  and  one  cannot  resist  its  chastening,  subduing 
influence.  Many  passages  from  the  Scriptures  are  in- 
troduced, with  frequent  allusions  to  the  sayings  of 
Christ,  whose  name  is  not  mentioned  in  the  Inferno. 

It  is  curious,  the  juxtaposition  of  Biblical  with 
mythological  characters. 

The  pilgrims  are  advancing  up  the  mountain  of 
Purgatory  when  they  descry  a  portal  with  three  steps 
beneath  (canto  ix.,  Gary's  translation). 

And  one  who  watched,  but  spake  not  yet  a  word. 

When  Virgil  had  explained  their  coming,  this  Being 
graciously  bade  them  approach. 

*'  The  lowest  stair  was  marble  white.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  The  next  of  hue  more  dark 

Than  sablest  grain  .  .  . 

.  .  .  The  third,  that  lay 

Massy  above,  seem'd  porphyry,  that  flam'd 

Red  as  the  life-blood  spouting  from  a  vein." 


82       ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

J,  A.  Symonds  says:  "In  this  grand  passage,  the 
white  and  polished  marble  is  purity  and  sincerity 
(symbolism  of  the  most  striking  kind)  of  soul,  per- 
fect candor,  without  which  penitence  is  vain.  The 
dark  slab,  dry  and  rugged,  represents  a  broken  and 
contrite  heart;  its  rift  is  crosswise,  indicating  the 
length,  and  breadth,  and  depth  of  sorrow  for  past  sin. 
The  sanguine-colored  porphyry  is  love — red  as  heart's 
blood,  and  solid  for  the  soul  to  stay  thereon.  The 
threshold  signifies  the  true  foundation  of  the  church. 
Here  God's  angel  sits." 

The  pilgrims  were  admitted,  and  within  they  heard, — 

"  We  praise  Thee,  O  God ! 
In  accents  blended  with  sweet  melody." 

Then  on,  from  terrace  to  terrace,  they  mounted, 
Dante  with  "ever  new  thirst  goading  him  on,"  till  re- 
warded by  the  sight  of  Beatrice  ! 

Virgil  had  fulfilled  his  mission,  and  had  led  Dante 
up  step  by  step,  till  now  he  was  to  see  the  fair  Beatrice. 
(Canto  XXX.,  Gary's  translation.) 


BEATEICE. 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."   85 


...  In  white  veil  with  olive  wreathed, 

A  virgin  in  my  view  appeared,  beneath 

Green  mantle,  robed  in  hue  of  living  flame : 

And  o'er  my  spirit,  that  in  former  days 

Within  her  presence  had  abode  so  long. 

No  shuddering  terror  crept.     Mine  eyes  no  more 

Had  knowledge  of  her ;  yet  there  moved  from  her 

A  hidden  virtue,  at  whose  touch  awak'd. 

The  power  of  ancient  love  was  strong  within  me. 

No  sooner  on  my  vision  streaming,  smote 
The  heavenly  influence,  which,  years  past,  and  e'en 
In  childhood,  thrill'd  me,  than  towards  Virgil  I 
Turned  me  to  leftward ;  panting,  like  a  babe, 
That  flees  for  refuge  to  his  mother's  breast.  .  .  . 
But  Virgil  had  bereft  us  of  himself ! 
Virgil,  my  best-lov'd  father ;  Virgil,  he 
To  whom  I  gave  me  up  for  safety. 


86  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

Could  any  words  express  sorrow  more  deeply? 
Beatrice's  words  were  not  consoling:  — 

"  Dante !  weep  not  that  Virgil  leaves  thee ;  nay, 
Weep  thou  not  yet :  behooves  thee  feel  the  edge 
Of  other  sword  ;  and  thou  shall  weep  for  that." 

Dante  turned  at  the  sound,  and  their  eyes  met. 
**  Observe  me  well.     I  am,  in  sooth,  I  am 
Beatrice." 

She  looked  upon  him  sternly,  and  he  blushed  with 
mingled  mortification  and  self-reproach.  Then  the 
angels  about  the  chariot  began  to  sing,  — 

**  In  thee,  O  gracious  Lord !  my  hope  hath  been." 

Now  was  Dante's  soul  melted  into  tears  of  true  re- 
pentance. Standing  there  upon  the  edge  of  her  chariot, 
Beatrice  delivered  the  trembling  Dante  a  scathing 
harangue,  in  which  she  accused  him  of  worldliness,  of 
folly,  of  forgetfulness. 

O'erpowered  I  fell :  and  what  my  state  was  then. 
She  knows,  who  was  the  cause. 

Dante,  unconscious,  was  tenderly  lifted  by  a  lady  and 
borne  to  the  water,  and  gently  immersed.  The  nymphs 
sang,  while  Beatrice  witnessed  the  scene  from  the  other 

shore  of  the  river. 

"...  Here  we  are  nymphs, 
And  in  the  heav'n  are  stars.     Or  ever  earth 
Was  visited  by  Beatrice,  we, 
Appointed  for  her  handmaids,  tended  on  her. 
We  to  her  eyes  will  lead  thee.  ..." 
"  Turn,  Beatrice  !  "  was  their  song :  "  Oh  !  turn 
Thy  saintly  sight  on  this  thy  faithful  one, 
Who,  to  behold  thee,  many  a  weary  pace 
Hath  measured.  ..." 

Mine  eyes  with  such  an  eager  coveting 
Were  bent  to  rid  them  of  their  ten  years'  thirst, 
No  other  sense  was  waking. 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  87 

BEATRICE. 

Longfellow. 

With  snow-white  veil,  and  garments  as  of  flame, 
She  stands  before  thee,  who,  so  long  ago, 
Filled  thy  young  heart  with  passion  and  the  woe 

From  which  thy  song  and  all  its  splendors  came ; 

And  while  with  stern  rebuke  she  speaks  thy  name, 
The  ice  about  thy  heart  melts  as  the  snow 
On  mountain  heights,  and  in  swift  overflow 

Comes  gushing  from  thy  lips  in  sobs  of  shame. 

Thou  makest  full  confession,  and  a  gleam 
As  of  the  dawn  on  some  dark  forest  cast. 

Seems  as  thy  lifted  forehead  to  i  ncrease ; 

Lethe  and  Eunoe,  the  remembered  dream. 
And  the  forgotten  sorrow  brings  at  last 

That  perfect  pardon  which  is  perfect  peace. 


88  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 


J.  A.  Symonds. 


Light,  in  general,  is  Dante's  special  and  chosen 
source  of  poetic  beauty,  light  everywhere,  in  the  sky 
and  earth  and  sea,  in  the  star,  the  flame,  the  lamp, 
the  gem  broken,  in  the  water  reflected  from  the  mirror 
transmitted  through  the  glass,  or  colored  through  the 
edge  of  the  fractured  emerald,  dimmed  in  the  mist,  the 
halo,  the  deep  water  streaming  through  the  rent  cloud, 
glowing  in  the  coal,  quivering  in  the  lightning,  flash- 
ing in  the  topaz  and  the  ruby,  veiled  behind  the  pure 
alabaster,  mellowed  and  clouding  itself  in  the  pearl 
light.  .  .   . 

The  Purgatorio  is  thus  made  like  our  familiar  world, 
made  to  touch  our  sympathies,  as  an  image  of  our  own 
purification  in  the  flesh. 

''As  a  symbol  of  Divine  Theology,  we  must  forget 
the  maiden  of  Florence,  Dante's  earthly  love,  and  con- 
sider him  as  through  her  influence  purified  from  all 
earthly  dross." 

It  makes  us  sad,  nevertheless,  to  lose  Virgil,  the 
faithful  guide,  who  so  quickly  disappears  as  the  splen- 
dor of  a  vision  of  Beatrice  meets  and  satisfies  the  heart 
of  Dante.  From  darkness  to  dawn,  Virgil  has  been 
loyal  to  his  trust  —  yet  the  poet  with  a  few  heartfelt 
tears  remands  him  to  the  shades. 

Enough  that  Lethe's  waters  have  purged  the  sinner 

Dante. 

**  From  the  most  Holy  Waters  I  returned 
Regenerate  in  the  manner  of  new  trees 
That  are  renewed  with  a  new  foliage ; 
Pure,  and  disposed  to  mount  unto  the  stars." 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  89 

PART  V. 

THE  PARADISO. 
H.  W.  Longfellow, 

I  LIFT  mine  eyes,  and  all  the  windows  blaze 

With  forms  of  saints  and  holy  men  who  died, 

Here  martyred  and  hereafter  glorified  ; 

And  the  great  Kose  upon  its  leaves  displays 
Christ's  Triumph,  and  the  angelic  roundelays, 

With  splendor  upon  splendor  multiplied  ; 

And  Beatrice  again  at  Dante's  side 

No  more  rebukes,  but  smiles  her  words  of  praise. 
And  then  the  organ  sounds,  and  unseen  choirs 

Sing  the  old  Latin  hymns  of  peace  and  love, 

And  benedictions  of  the  Holy  Ghost ; 
And  the  melodious  bells  among  the  spires 

O'er  all  the  house-tops  and  through  heaven  above 

Proclaim  the  elevation  of  the  Host ! 


90  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

"  The   Paradiso 

is  the  least  read  of  the  three  parts  of  the  Divina  Comme- 
dia,  but  it  is  the  dearest  of  all  to  the  student.  If  you 
would  feel  the  magic  influence  of  this  poem,  you  must 
clothe  yourself  in  light,  you  must  be  children  of  the 
light,  you  must  gaze  on  the  light  as  with  the  eagle's 
undazzled  eye.  For  here  Dante  leaves  earth  entirely 
behind  him. 

"  Dante  is  at  last  suffered  to  gaze  for  one  instant  upon 
the  supernal  glory  of  God,  the  Trinity  in  Unity,  see- 
ing as  in  one  dazzling  flash,  which  melts  his  memory 
as  the  sunlight  melts  the  snow,  a  terrible  orb  of  three 
different  colors,  in  which  the  one  seems  to  reflect  the 
other.  Speech  fails,  the  waxen  wings  of  poetry  are 
melted  and  drop  useless." —  Canon  Farrar. 


J.  A.  Symonds.     (Essay.) 

It  is  a  strange  world,  this  Paradiso  conceived  of  by 
Dante,  unlike  anything  that  an  earlier  poet  dreamed 
or  seer  saw  in  trance  revealed  to  him.  .  .  . 

To  appreciate  the  Paradiso  rightly,  we  require  (at 
least  a  portion)  of  Shelley's  or  Beethoven's  soul.  It 
is  only  some  "  unbodied  joy,"  some  spirit  rapt  by 
love,  above  the  vapors  and  the  sounds  of  earth,  that 
dares  to  soar  or  can  breathe  long  in  this  ethereal 
atmosphere. 

In  the  Paradiso,  "  no  portrait  of  a  soul  is  sweeter 
or  more  delicately  painted  than  that  of  Piccarda  Do- 
hati."     (Canto  iii.) 

Dante  finds  her  among  the  dreamlike,  holy  faces, 


"  BELOVED    FLORENCE."  91 

leaning  towards  him  from  the  cloud.  .  .  .  We  fancy 
her  seen  through  shining  mist  hke  one  of  the 
white  spring  lilies  of  the  Alps,  frail  and  faintly  per- 
fumed, exquisitely  pure;  her  very  speech  has  in  it  a 
mild  radiance,  a  subdued  and  pearly  lustre  as  of  lilies 
dewy  in  the  twilight. 

In  the  Paradiso,  the  seven  planets,  according  to  the 
Ptolemaic  system  of  astronomy,  are  the  spheres  in 
which  dwell  the  blessed.  An  eighth  sphere  is  the 
Fixed  Stars;  a  ninth,  the  Primum  Mobile,  or  mover 
of  these  spheres  around  the  earth.  The  Empyrean  is 
the  highest.  These  make  Paradise,  where  all  are 
happy,  but  in  varying  degrees  of  bliss. 


Paradiso,  Canto  I.  {Longfellow's  Translation). 

.  .  .  O  power  divine !  lend'st  thou  thyself  to  me, 
So  that  the  shadow  of  the  blessed  realm 
Stamped  in  my  brain  I  can  make  manifest. 

"Upward  gazed  Beatrice,  and  I  saw  her,  .  .  . 

.  .  .  When  a  wondrous  thing 
Drew  to  itself  my  sight,  and  therefore  she 
From  whom  no  care  of  mine  could  be  concealed 
Towards  me  turning,  blithe  and  beautiful, 
Said  unto  me,  *'  Fix  gratefully  thy  mind 
On  God,  who  to  the  first  star  has  brought  me." 

"And  they  seemed  to  enter  a  cloud,  luminous,  dense, 
bright";  "the  eternal  pearl  received  them  as  water 
receives  a  ray  of  light,  remaining  still  unbroken." 

Milman  says,  in  his  Church  History,  "  that  in  the 
Paradiso  there  should  be  a  dazzling  sameness,  a  mystic 


92  ABOUT   DANTE    AND    HIS 

indistinctness,  an  inseparable  blending  of  the  real  and 
unreal,  is  not  wonderful,  if  we  consider  the  nature  of 
the  subject,  and  the  still  more  incoherent  and  incon- 
gruous popular  conceptions  which  Dante  is  to  repre- 
sent and  harmonize. 

"  It  is  more  wonderful  that,  with  the  few  elements 
of  Light,  Music,  and  Mysticism,  he  should,  by  his 
singular  talent  of  embodying  the  purely  abstract  and 
metaphysical  thought  in  the  liveliest  imagery,  present 
such  things  with  the  most  objective  truth,  yet  without 
disturbing  their  fine  spiritualism.  .  .  . 

"  This  spiritualization  of  penalty  gives  to  the  poem 
a  powerful  moral  bearing.  The  depth  of  Hell  once 
sounded,  Dante  pierces  it  and  reascends  upon  the 
other  side  of  the  infinite.  In  rising,  he  becomes  ideal- 
ized, and  thought  drops  the  body  as  a  robe." 

Victor  Hugo,  in  "William  Shakespeare." 

"From  Virgil  he  passes  to  Beatrice;  his  guide  to 
Hell  is  the  poet;  his  guide  to  Heaven  is  poetry.  The 
epic  swells  into  grander  proportions  as  it  continues, 
but  man  no  longer  comprehends  it.  Purgatory  and 
Paradise  are  not  less  extraordinary  than  Gehenna,  but 
as  we  ascend  we  lose  our  interest.  We  were  somewhat 
at  home  in  Hell,  but  are  no  longer  so  in  Heaven.  We 
cannot  recognize  our  fellows  in  the  angels,  perhaps 
the  human  eye  is  not  made  for  such  excess  of  light; 
and  when  the  poem  becomes  happy  it  becomes  tedious. 
.  .  .  After  all,  what  matters  it  to  Dante  if  you  no 
longer  follow  him?  He  goes  on  without  you.  He  stalks 
alone,  this  lion!     His  work  is  a  miracle." 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  93 

Lowell's  Essays. 

Looked  at  outwardly,  the  life  of  Dante  seems  to 
have  been  an  utter  and  disastrous  failure.  What  its 
inward  satisfaction  must  have  been,  we,  with  the 
Paradiso  open  before  us,  can  form  some  faint  concep- 
tion. To  him,  longing  with  an  intensity  that  only  the 
word  Dantesque  will  express,  to  realize  an  ideal  upon 
earth,  and  continually  baffled  and  misunderstood,  the 
far  greater  part  of  his  mature  life  must  have  been  labor 
and  sorrow. 

' '  Thou  shalt  leave  each  thing 
Beloved  most  dearly ;  this  is  the  first  shaft 
Shot  from  the  bow  of  exile.     Thou  shalt  prove 
How  salt  the  savor  is  of  others'  bread, 
How  hard  the  passage  to  descend  and  cUmb 
By  others'  stairs." 

This  passage  Dante  puts  into  the  lips  of  Cacciaguida, 
to  whom  he  devotes  three  cantos  of  the  Paradiso, — 
XV.,  xvi.,  xvii.  He  esteems  him  highly,  as  he  names 
him  a  Uving  topaz,  and  calls  him  "  that  saintly  lamp." 

Dante  introduces  many  saints  of  the  Church  and 
Doctors  of  Theology  into  the  courts  of  Heaven  — 
Saint  Francis,  Thomas  Aquinas,  Benedict,  and  others. 

In  fashion,  as  a  snow-white  rose,  lay  there 
Before  my  view  the  saintly  multitude, 
Which  in  His  own  blood  Christ  espoused. 

Gary's  Translation. 

All  these,  who  reign  in  safety  and  in  bliss, 
Ages  long  past  or  new,  on  one  sole  mark 
Their  love  and  vision  fijx'd.     O  trinal  beam 
Of  individual  star,  that  charm 'st  them  thus ! 
Vouchsafe  one  glance  to  gild  our  storm  below ! 


94  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

.  .  .  And  as  a  pilgrim,  when  he  rests 
Within  the  temple  of  his  vow,  looks  round 
In  breathless  awe,  and  hopes  some  time  to  tell 
Of  all  its  goodly  state,  e'en  so  mine  eyes 
Cours'd  up  and  down  along  the  living  light. 

Turning  to  look  at  Beatrice,  Dante  saw  at  his  side 
"  a  senior  robed  in  glory,"  who  bade  him  look  aloft  to 
the  third  circle  from  the  highest. 

"...  Answering  not,  mine  eyes  I  raised, 
And  saw  her  where  aloof  she  sat,  her  brow 
A  wreath  reflecting  of  eternal  beams." 

(Dante  besought  her  not  to  leave  him.)      ' 

**  O  lady !  thou  in  whom  my  hopes  have  rest,  .  .  . 

Thy  liberal  bounty  still  toward  me  keep : 

That,  when  my  spirit,  which  thou  madest  whole, 

Is  loosened  from  this  body,  it  may  find 

Favor  with  thee." 

Beatrice  graciously  — 

"looked  down 
And  smiled ;  then  towards  the  eternal  fountain  turned." 

Then  Saint  Bernard  offered  his  prayers  in  behalf  of 
Dante:  — 

"...  Here  kneeleth  one, 
Who  of  all  spirits  hath  reviewed  the  state, 
From  the  world's  lowest  gap  unto  this  height ; 
Suppliant  to  thee  he  kneels,  imploring  grace 
For  virtue  yet  more  high,  to  lift  his  ken 
Toward  the  bliss  supreme.     And  I,  who  ne'er 
Coveted  sight,  more  fondly,  for  myself, 
Than  now  for  him,  my  prayers  to  thee  prefer, 
(And  pray  they  be  not  scant,)  that  thou  wouldst  drive 
Each  cloud  of  his  mortality  away." 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  95 

Dante's  power  of  vision  was  steadily  becoming 
more  refined  and  intense. 

"  Thenceforward  what  I  saw 
Was  not  for  words  to  speak  nor  memory's  self." 

Yet  it  is  for  power  to  speak  that  the  suppliant 
prays,  — 

Power,  but  to  leave  one  sparkle  of  thy  glory 

Unto  the  race  to  come  that  shall  not  lose 

Thy  triumph  wholly.  .  .  . 

Here  vigor  failed  the  towering  fantasy : 

But  yet  the  will  roll'd  onward,  like  a  wheel 

In  even  motion,  by  the  love  impell'd, 

That  moves  the  sun  in  heaven  and  all  the  stars." 

J.  A.  Symonds  calls  the  Divina  Commedia  an  Apoc- 
alypse, not  an  Allegory,  although  full  of  allegoricB. 

Those  to  whom  music,  light,  and  love  are  elemental 
as  the  air  they  breathe  will  be  at  home  in  Paradiso. 

Discord,  hate,  and  gloom,  the  passions  of  the  flesh, 
the  tempests  of  the  heart,  the  toil  of  the  understanding, 
are  found  to  all  satiety  in  the  Inferno. 

Between  them  both  stands  the  Purgatorio,  humane 
and  mild,  the  temperate  zone  of  that  imagined  world. 

Dante  had  beheld  a  miracle  in  Beatrice,  and  so  when 
he  exalts  her  in  the  Divina  Commedia,  when  by  vir- 
tue of  his  personal  faith  he  sets  her  in  glory  above 
the  saints,  near  to  the  Most  Holy  Virgin  herself,  and 
represents  her  as  the  favored  one  of  the  Almighty,  he 
is  but  carrying  out  the  fervent  conceptions  of  his  Vita 
Nuova  to  their  required  and  true  conclusions. 


96  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

John  Lord,  in  "Beacon  Lights." 

The  Divina  Commedia  cannot  be  understood  by- 
anybody  without  a  tolerable  acquaintance  with  the 
Middle  Ages,  when  people  were  ignorant  and  super- 
stitious, before  the  Crusades  had  ended. 

Dr.  Lord  thinks  Dante  not  so  close  an  observer  of 
human  nature  as  Shakespeare,  nor  so  learned  a  man 
as  Milton,  but  in  pathos,  intensity,  and  fiery  emphasis 
he  is  only  to  be  surpassed  by  the  Hebrew  poets  and 
prophets. 

Carlyle's  "Heroes  and  Hero- Worship.^' 

I  give  Dante  highest  praise  when  I  say  of  his  Divine 
Comedy,  that  it  is,  in  all  senses,  genuinely  a  Song.  .  .  . 
Its  depth,  and  rapt  passion,  and  sincerity,  make  it  mu- 
sical; go  deep  enough,  there  is  music  everywhere.  A 
true  inward  symmetry,  what  one  calls  an  architectural 
harmony,  reigns  in  it,  proportionates  it  all;  architec- 
tural, which  also  partakes  of  the  character  of  music. 

The  three  kingdoms.  Inferno,  Purgatorio,  Paradiso, 
look  out  on  one  another  like  compartments  of  a  great 
edifice,  a  great  supernatural  world-cathedral  piled  up 
there,  stern,  solemn,  awful — Dante's  World  of  Souls! 
It  is  at  bottom  the  sincerest  of  all  poems  —  sincerity 
here,  too,  we  find  to  be  the  measure  of  all  worth.  The 
people  of  Verona,  when  they  saw  him  on  the  streets, 
said,  ''  See!  there  is  the  man  that  has  been  in  Hell." 
Ah,  yes!  he  has  been  in  Hell,  in  hell  enough,  in  long, 
severe  sorrow  and  struggle. 

Comedies  that  come  out  divine  are  not  accomplished  otherwise. 


97 

The  uses  of  this  Dante? 

We  will  not  say  much  about  his  uses.  A  human 
soul  that  has  once  got  into  the  primal  element  of  song, 
and  has  sung  forth  fitly  somewhat  therefrom,  has 
worked  in  the  depths  of  our  existence,  feeding  through 
long  times  the  life-roots  of  all  excellent  human  things 
whatsoever  in  a  way  that  utilities  will  not  succeed 
well  in  calculating. 

We  will  not  estimate  the  sun  by  the  quantity  of 
gaslight  it  saves  us.  Dante  shall  be  invaluable,  or  of 
no  value. 


98  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 


PART    VI. 


John  George  Hargreave. 

The  time  came  when  Dante's  great  poem  was 
ordered  to  be  read  in  all  the  churches,  like  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  when  it  was  made  the  subject  of  more  com- 
mentaries than  any  other  book  except  the  Bible,  and 
when  any  person  who  was  found  ignorant  of  it  was 
denounced  as  a  brute  devoid  of  reason. 

But  this  time  did  not  come  till  half  a  century  after 
the  weary  tempest-tossed  poet  had  set  out  to  explore, 
in  person,  at  least  one  of  the  worlds  he  had  so  vividly 
portrayed. 

In  1843,  there  were  nearly  one  hundred  translations 
of  Dante's  poem,  —  the  "mystic,  unfathomable  song," 
as  Tieck  calls  it. 

Germany,  perhaps,  was  the  first  to  catch  the  true 
spirit  of  the  original;  France  was  less  eager.  Voltaire, 
Lamartine,  and  other  men  of  wit  and  learning,  said 
bitter  things  of  it.  England  and  America  have  brought 
their  tributes  of  admiration  to  "the  highe  poete  of 
Itaille"  in  thoughts  that  breathe  and  words  that  burn. 
The  admiration  of  the  Rossetti  family  for  Dante 
reaches  the  high  tide  of  adoration,  —  father,  sons,  and 
daughters.  Their  translations,  poems,  and  commen- 
taries upon  their  favorite  theme  fill  volumes.  The 
Shadow  of  Dante,  Dante  and  His  Cirde,  are  a  proof  of 
loving  devotion. 

Christina  Rossetti  undervalued  her  share  of  the 
work.     She   said  mournfully,   "  I  wish   I,   too,  could 


99 

have  done  something  for  Dante  in  England."  She  did 
write  a  Study  of  Dante  for  the  Century  Magazine  of 
February,  1884,  and  one  for  The  Churchman^ s  Shilling 
Magazine,  entitled  An  English  Classic,  and  was  herself 
an  ardent  student  of  the  great  poet,  and  his  works  in- 
flenced  her  thoughts  and  expressions. 

She  wrote  to  her  publisher:  "  But  if  ever  you  re- 
ceive a  Dante  book  for  review,  and  care  to  intrust  it 
to  me,  I  would  gladly  try  my  hand  on  it;  perhaps  en- 
thusiasm for  my  subject  might  make  up  for  scant 
learning." 

Again  she  wrote  to  Mr.  Gurney:  "  Thank  you  for 
your  Vita  Nuova;  sweet  and  tender,  and  full  of  regret 
and  hope.  May  each  Dante  join  his  Beatrice,  and 
each  Beatrice  be  or  become  worthy  of  her  Dante." 

There  are  eleven  letters  extant,  known  to  have  been 
written  by  Dante.  These  can  be  found  in  book-form, 
translated  by  a  Harvard  student,  Charles  Sterrett  La- 
tham. Although  suffering  from  paralysis  so  that  he 
had  to  study  and  recite  much  of  the  time  on  his  couch, 
he  performed  this  translation  (with  learned  comments 
of  his  own)  so  creditably,  that  the  "  Dante  Prize  " 
was  awarded  him.  Poor  fellow!  he  had  passed  into 
that  "  Paradiso,"  where  perhaps  Dante  awaited  him 
(who  knows?),  before  the  announcement  of  the  earthly 
honor  had  gladdened  his  heart. 

Dante  wrote  to  a  Florentine  friend:  "  If  another  way 
shall  be  found  by  you  or  others  to  return  to  my 
country,  that  does  not  derogate  from  the  fame  or  the 
honor  of  my  good  name,  then  will  I  gladly  take  it 
with  no  lagging  step,  but  if  Florence  is  entered  by  no 
such  path,  then  never  will  I  see  Florence." 


100  ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

To  the  Lord  Can  Grande  he  wrote  a  letter  which 
gives  full  explanations  of  the  metaphorical  and  alle- 
gorical meanings  in  his  great  poem.  To  this  lord  he 
dedicates  his  "Paradise,"  — "  sublime,  and  worthy  of 
his  friend,"  he  says;  and  presents  it  to  him. 

This  act  of  courtesy  must  have  taken  place  in  the 
earlier  days  of  their  intercourse,  when  the  poet  was 
a  welcome  guest  at  the  table  of  this  haughty  magnate 
of  Verona. 

Petrarch  is  the  authority  for  saying  that  Dante  was 
held  in  much  honor  by  Can  Grande  at  first,  but  after- 
wards by  degrees  fell  out  of  favor. 

It  is  even  related  that  his  distinguished  host  insulted 
him  at  his  own  table. 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  has  written  a  long  poem 
detailing  Dante's  unhappy  life  at  the  gay  court  of 
Verona. 

DANTE  AT  VERONA. 
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 
Arriving  only  to  depart 
From  court  to  court,  from  land  to  land, 
Like  flame  within  the  naked  hand ; 
His  body  bore  his  burning  heart, 
That  still  in  Florence  strove  to  bring 
God's  fire  for  a  burnt-offering. 

Even  such  was  Dante's  mood,  when  now, 

Marked  for  long  years  with  fortune's  sport, 

He  dwelt  at  yet  another  court ; 
There  where  Verona's  knee  did  bow. 

And  her  voice  hailed  with  all  acclaim 

Can  Grande  delia  Scala's  name ! 


101 


Eat  and  wash  hands,  Can  Grande ;  scarce 
We  know  their  deeds  now ;  hands  which  fed 
Our  Dante  with  that  bitter  bread ; 

And  thou  the  watch-dogs  of  those  stairs 
Which,  of  all  paths  his  feet  knew  well, 
Were  steeper  found  than  Heaven  or  Hell ! 


Dante  left  many  illuminated  manuscripts.  Monks 
in  the  convent  cells  often  spent  a  lifetime  in  this  deli- 
cate hand- work. 

Mr.  Hawthorne  mentions  some  that  he  saw  in  Mr. 
Kirkup's  possession,  once  owned  by  Dante,  but  still 
retaining  the  lustre  of  their  gold  and  vermilion,  un- 
tarnished by  the  dust  of  centuries. 

Who  knows  but  that  these  very  ones  were  wrought 
by  the  self-same  illuminators,  his  friends  of  whom  he 
asks  (Purgatorio,  canto  xi.  80-85,  Longfellow's  trans- 
lation),— 

"  Art  thou  not  Oderisi, 
Agobbio's  honor,  and  honor  of  that  art 
Which  is  in  Paris  called  illuminating?" 
''Brother,"  said  he,  *■'  more  laughing  are  the  leaves 
Touched  by  the  brush  of  Franco  Bolognese ; 
All  his  the  honor  now,  and  mine  in  part. 

"  In  painting,  Cimabue  thought  that  he 

Should  hold  the  field ;  now  Giotto  has  the  cry, 
So  that  the  other's  fame  is  growing  dim. 
So  has  one  Guido  from  the  other  taken 
The  glory  of  our  tongue,  and  he  perchance 
Is  born,  who  from  the  nest  shall  chase  them  both.'* 

The  two  Guidos  (one  Cavalcanti),  Dante's  special 
friend,  is   introduced   in   the   Inferno,  canto  x.;    the 


102  ABOUT    DANTE    AND    HIS 

other,    Giunicelli,  in  Purgatorio,    canto    xxvii.     Both 
had  great  literary  fame.     Of  the  latter,  Dante  says:  — 

Those  dulcet  lays  (I  answered)  which  as  long 

As  of  our  tongue  the  beauty  does  not  fade, 

Shall  make  us  love  the  very  ink  that  trac'd  them." 

To  his  own  great  name  the  poet  would  seem  almost 
indifferent  (Gary's  translation):  — 

"  The  noise 
Of  worldly  fame  is  but  a  blast  of  wind 
That  blows  from  divers  points  and  shifts  its  name, 
Shifting  the  point  it  blows  from." 

How  Shakespearean  this  sounds,  the  context  as  well. 

In  1373,  Florence  instituted  a  chair  of  the  Divina 
Commedia,  with  Boccaccio  as  its  expounder;  He  began 
his  lectures  one  Sunday,  but  they  had  only  reached 
the  seventeenth  line  of  the  seventeenth  canto  of  the 
Inferno,  when  the  professor  was  seized  with  an  illness 
of  which  he  died. 

Poor  Florence  did  try  to  make  some  reparation  for 
her  folly  and  shortsightedness.  The  republic  voted  a 
sum  of  money  to  be  paid  to  Dante's  daughter  in  the 
convent,  and  a  monument  to  the  poet,  which  Michael 
Angelo  would  have  built,  but  this  was  not  accom- 
plished until  1829,  when  Picci  made  a  cenotaph  for 
Santa  Croce.  It  has  three  colossal  figures,  Dante  in 
the  center.  Poesy  and  Italy  on  either  side. 

It  is  said  that  the  manuscript  copies  of  the  Divina 
Commedia  made  in  the  fourteenth  centur}^  now  in 
European  libraries,  are  more  numerous  than  those  of 
the  works  of  all  other  authors. 


"beloved    FLORENCE.'*  103 

In  1472  the  first  printed  copy  of  the  Divina  Corn- 
media  appeared.  In  the  sixteenth  century  there  ap- 
peared forty  editions  in  Italy  alone.  A  hundred  years 
later,  a  Dante  frenzy  caught  Germany  and  spread 
over  Europe,  though  France  was  slow  to  respond. 

Voltaire  said:  "They  call  Dante  divine,  but  it  is  a 
hidden  divinity."  He  afterwards  owned  that  he  had 
found  some  verses  so  charming  and  true  that  they 
had  not  grown  old  in  four  hundred  years,  and  would 
never  grow  old.  Dante  did  not  call  his  poem  "  Divine  "; 
Italy  did  that  for  him  in  1516.  He  called  it  a  "  Com- 
edy," a  French  writer  explains,  because  Dante  felt 
himself  unworthy  to  assume  the  title  of  "  High-Tra- 
gedy," which  belonged  to  the  great  poem  of  his  master, 
Virgil. 

The  name  seems  inappropriate  for  such  serious 
themes,  but  we  would  not,  if  we  could,  give  it  any 
other  title;  it  would  be  sacrilege. 

Dante  wrote  the  Convito  (The  Banquet)  some  years 
after  finishing  the  Vita  Nuova. 

Professor  Norton  says  that  it  derives  its  name  from 
the  main  design,  which  was  that  of  providing  instruc- 
tion which  should  be  serviceable  in  the  conduct  of  life 
for  those  who  had  scant  opportunities  of  learning. 
This  Dante  proposed  to  do,  by  means  of  a  series  of 
treatises  in  the  vulgar  tongue,  and  in  the  form  of  com- 
ment upon  Canzoni  (songs)  of  his  own,  which,  though 
in  appearance  poems  of  love,  were  in  reality  poems  of 
morality  and  philosophy.  He  says:  "  If  in  the  present 
work,  which  is  called  the  Convito,  the  discourse  be 
more  virile   than  that  of   the   Vita  Nuova,  I  do  not 


104  ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

therefore  intend  to  discredit  the  former.  In  the  for- 
mer I  spoke  at  the  entrance  to  my  youth;  in  the  lat- 
ter, youth  being  now  gone  by." 

In  the  Convito  (Dean  Church's  translation),  Dante 
says:  "After  that,  it  was  the  pleasure  of  the  citizens  of 
that  fairest  and  most  famous  daughter  of  Rome  — 
Florence  —  to  cast  me  forth  from  the  sweet  bosom 
wherein  I  had  been  nourished  up  to  the  maturity  of 
my  life,  and  in  which,  with  all  peace  to  her,  I  long 
with  all  my  heart  to  rest  my  weary  soul,  and  finish 
the  time  which  is  given  me.  I  have  passed  through 
almost  all  the  regions  to  which  this  language  reaches, 
a  wanderer,  almost  a  beggar,  displaying  against  my 
will  the  stroke  of  fortune  which  is  ofttimes  unjustly 
wont  to  be  imputed  to  the  person  stricken.  Truly,  I 
have  been  a  ship  without  a  sail  or  helm,  carried  to 
divers  harbors,  and  gulfs,  and  shores  by  that  parch- 
ing wind  which  sad  poverty  breathes." 

Dante  in  his  wanderings  came  one  day  to  the  con- 
vent of  San  Onorio;  entering  the  inclosure,  he  stood 
for  some  time  silent,  abstracted,  till  one  of  the  brothers, 
observing  him,  asked  what  he  wanted.  Still  silent, 
the  monk  repeated  the  question,  when  Dante,  waving 
his  hand,  answered  but  one  word,  "  Peace!  " 

The  good  brother  then  approached  him,  taking  his 
hand,  and  led  him  to  a  seat,  soothing  him  with  gentle 
words.  Dante's  heart  was  opened,  and  he  talked  of 
his  sorrows  and  tribulations.  Before  leaving,  he  drew 
from  his  bosom  the  manuscript  of  his  great  poem  and 
presented  it  to  the  monk. 


"beloved    FLORENCE."  105 

TO   DANTE. 
H.  W.  Longfellow. 

Tuscan,  that  wanderest  through  the  realms  of  gloom 
With  thoughtful  pace  and  sad,  majestic  eyes. 
Stern  thoughts  and  awful  from  thy  soul  arise, 
Like  Farinata  from  his  fiery  tomb ! 

Thy  sacred  song  is  like  the  trump  of  doom. 
Yet  in  thy  heart  what  human  sympathies. 
What  soft  compassion  glows  as  in  the  skies. 
The  tender  stars  their  clouded  lamps  relume ; 

Methinks  I  see  thee  stand  with  pallid  cheeks 
By  Fra  Hilario  in  his  diocese, 
As  up  the  convent  walls  in  golden  streaks 

The  ascending  sunbeams  mark  the  day's  decrease, 
And  as  he  asks  what  there  the  stranger  seeks, 
Thy  voice  along  the  cloister  whispers,  '*  Peace  !  " 


106   ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

E.  C.  Stedman,  in  "Nature  of  Poetry." 

After  Dante,  it  may  be  said  that  the  world  is  all 
before  us,  "where  to  choose."  .  .  .  His  own  age  be- 
came Dante,  as  if  by  one  of  the  metamorphoses  in  the 
Inferno.  And  the  Divine  Comedy  is  equally  one  with 
its  creator.  The  age,  the  poem,  the  poet,  alike,  are 
Dante;  his  epic  is  a  trinity  in  spirit,  as  in  form. 

Canon  Farrar. 

Dante  had  loved  Beatrice,  and  she  had  died ;  he  had 
loved  philosophy,  and  it  had  broken  as  a  bruised  reed; 
he  had  loved  Florence,  and  she  had  flung  him  out  of 
her  bosom  with  an  implacable  fury  and  resentment. 
He  was  doomed  in  nineteen  years  of  hopeless  wander- 
ing and  galling  dependence  to  learn  how  hard  a  pace 
it  is  to  tread  a  patron's  stair.  He  died  in  Ravenna,  at 
the  age  of  fifty-six,  of  a  broken  heart.  A  century 
later,  Florence  begged  for  his  remains.  Even  Leo  X. 
and  Michael  Angelo  urged  the  petition,  but  were  re- 
fused. In  Ravenna,  the  dust  of  Dante  sleeps  until 
the  Judgment  Day.  Those  pine  woods  were  green 
then,  though  blighted  now,  and  Dante's  life,  though 
blighted  then,  has  put  forth  the  brightest  leaves  for 
us  in  song.  But  for  that  despair  of  heart,  he  might 
have  been  a  graceful  love-poet,  but  he  never  would 
have  written  the  Divine  Comedy. 


DEATH-MASK    OF   DANTE, 


-o 

3HX  JO 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."       109 
FROM  A  MEMORIAL  ODE. 

By  permission  of  the  author,  Prof.  A.  G.  Newcomer,  Stanford  University. 


Beneath  the  pavement  of  Ravenna  lies 
All  that  remains  of  him  whose  bitter  fare 
Of  alien  bread  sustained  him  to  endure 
The  apocalypse  that  blasts  our  weaker  eyes, 

The  human  soul  laid  bare. 
All  that  remains?    Nay ;  Giotto's  penciled  truth 
Hath  given  over  to  immortal  youth, 
Unmarred  by  griefs'  and  exile's  signature, 

Fresh  with  life's  morning  kiss. 
The  clear,  grave  face  that  looked  on  Beatrice. 
And  so  he  lives,  dissevered  soul  and  sense. 
Yet  such  dividual  life  were  naught 

But  that  each  poet's  dower 

Gives  him  creative  power 
To  eke  out  nature's  poor  incompetence 

And  justify  his  hour. 
For  his  transcendent  vision  recombines, 

Refining  still  away 
What  imperfections  marked  them  for  decay. 
The  crumbling  earth  and  fleshless  pictured  lines 

Of  Giotto's  cunning.     Yea, 
Divining  half  from  what  the  live  hands  wrought 

With  impress  large  and  strong, 
And  half  from  what  the  living  accents  taught, 

He  pieces  out  the  whole. 

Conjecturing  the  soul 
From  the  soul's  deeds,  the  singer  from  the  song, 
Till  recreate,  life's  laurel  round  his  head. 
So  Dante's  self,  immortal,  perfected. 


110       ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS 

Dante,  like  Virgil,  his  beloved  master,  wrote  his  own 
epitaph.  Both  are  in  Latin.  Virgil's  tomb  is  in  the 
cleft  of  the  rock  in  the  grotto  of  Pausilippo,  at  Naples. 

Dante  died  in  1321,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six.  He  was 
cared  for  by  the  Polenta  family  at  Ravenna,  who  built 
his  tomb. 


DANTE'S   EPITAPH. 

The  right  of  monarchy,  the  Heavens,  the  stream  of  fire,  the  pit, 
In  vision  seen,  I  sang  as  far  as  to  the  Fates  seemed  fit, 
But  since  my  soul  an  alien  here  hath  flown  to  nobler  wars, 
And  happier  now  hath  gone  to  seek  its  Maker  'mid  the  stars, 
Here  am  I,  Dante,  shut,  exiled  from  the  ancestral  shore, 
Whom  Florence  the  (of  ail)  least-loving  mother  bore. 


DANTB    AND   BEATRICE. 


ABOUT  DANTE  AND  HIS  "BELOVED  FLORENCE."       113 

DANTE. 

Eugene  Field. 

The  rain  falls  on  Ghiberti's  gates, 

The  big  drops  hang  on  purple  dates, 
And  yet  beneath  the  ilex  shades, 
Dear  trysting-place  for  boys  and  maids, 

There  comes  a  form  from  days  of  old 

With  Beatrice's  hair  of  gold ; 
The  breath  of  lands  on  lilied  streams 
Floats  through  the  fabrics  of  my  dreams ; 

And  yonder,  from  the  hills  of  song. 

Where  psalmists  brood  and  people  throng, 
The  lone,  majestic  Dante  leads 
His  love  across  the  blooming  meads. 


UNIVERSITY   J 


ABOUT 

DANTE 


FRANCES  FENTON    5ANB0RN 


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